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GOD’S WILL 
FOR THE WORLD 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Does Christ Still Heal? 

An Examination of the Christian 
View of Sickness and a Presentation 
of the Permanency of the Divine Com¬ 
mission to Heal. 


E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 






GOD’S WILL 
FOR THE WORLD 

A Refutation of the Popular 
Interpretation of the Phrase 

“THY WILL BE DONE.” 

$■ 

i BY 

HENRY B. WILSON, B.D. 

AUTHOR OF “DOES CHRIST STILL HEAL?” 

“THE POWER TO HEAL,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 







COPYRIGHT, 1933, 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 


Printed in the United States of Ann erica 


FEB 13 23 


Cl A 6 0 C 3 4 6 


y r j 


/ 





n 

* 


CONTENTS 




f 

.1 


PART I 

THY WILL BE DONE 

PAGE 

Introduction. 3 

CHAPTER 

I. “Thy Will Be Done”. 8 

II. Christ’s Knowledge of God’s Will . 15 

III. The Battle in Gethsemane .... 27 

IV. Basis of the Misinterpretation ... 68 

V. The True Meaning.74 

VI. Losing the Lord’s Prayer.96 

PART II 

SEEKING GOD’S WILL 

Introduction .nl 

CHAPTER 

I. Misrepresenting God’s Will . . . 114 

II. The Deadening Letter and the Life- 

Giving Spirit.124 

III. Fear of “Higher Criticism” .... 134 

IV. The Result of Our Knowledge . . 147 











PART I. 


THY WILL BE DONE 


/ 



GOD'S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


PART I. 

THY WILL BE DONE. 
INTRODUCTION. 

TN endeavoring to reveal the will of God and 
A His true character as a loving Father to the 
Jews, Jesus was compelled to reverse completely 
the established Hebraic conception of God. (i) 
He abrogated their theory of God as a vengeful, 
punishing Deity; (2) He revealed Him as ever 
working and ever yearning for man’s wholeness 
and happiness in body and soul, and working as 
actively in this respect on the Sabbath as on any 
other day. This disregard of their traditions 
and customs in the operation of God’s will, and 
this claim of oneness, marked the beginning of 
their hostility which ended in His death. 

In the endeavor to restore, after centuries of 
neglect, the healing ministry to the Church, the 
only serious opposition has come from Church 
teachers and is based on religious grounds. First 
it was that the “miracles” of healing were used by 

3 


4 


GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


Jesus only as signs of His Messiahship and were 
gradually withdrawn after the Church was or¬ 
ganized. This has been so completely pver- 
thrown that few are to be found who hold it 
now. 

Second, and more serious, was the claim that 
God sent sickness and disaster as a means of dis¬ 
cipline, and that it was to be accepted as such 
for our good. Many clung to this theory so 
tenaciously as to glorify it by designating it as 
a “sacrament of suffering.” They defended their 
position by reminding their hearers that, in His 
suffering, Jesus said: “Not my will, but Thine be 
done.” 

This sacred phrase has to many been unan¬ 
swerable and conclusive. It has been accepted 
even though it did not satisfy. This theology 
has been strengthened by the fact that each year, 
with the recurrence of Good Friday, and the won¬ 
derful message of love, there are presented the 
scene in the Garden and the unforgettable prayer. 
In many churches and in innumerable devotional 
books there are the conventional expansion and 
misinterpretation of these words, carrying with 
them the idea that the hand of God is behind 
every agony that may come upon us, and that if 
we would be true Christians, we must learn to 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


pray and “submit” as Jesus did. Thus, each 
year, another barrier is raised by religious teachers 
between the heart of the seeker and the heart of 
God; a great truth is emptied of its content, and, 
in consequence, multitudes of God’s dear children 
are deprived of the ministry of healing in spite 
of the simple teachings of the Master all through 
His life. 

During a recent mission in Washington I tried 
to show how wrong it would be to connect God 
with the deaths of the ninety-eight persons who 
were killed in a theater disaster in that city. The 
next day a young woman, who had lost her brother 
in that accident, stated that she had been visited 
by several of her church people, who were quite 
sure that the disaster was a punishment sent by 
God because of “theater-going.” She said our 
message brought her much comfort. It is an easy 
matter to repudiate such theology, but yet these 
people were taught this untruth by church teachers, 
who are still engaged in teaching it, and who 
insist upon linking disaster and death with the 
will of God. 

What Then of Suffering? 

Some persons say that if we teach in this way 
we take away all manner of Christian suffering 


6 


GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


and deprive the teaching of Jesus of much that is 
of value. Such statements are due to a misun¬ 
derstanding of the teaching of Jesus and also of 
our teaching, which is in accord with His. We 
do not state there is to be no Christian suffering. 
Frequently a person is called upon to undergo 
very real suffering because of his Christian posi¬ 
tion. He fails in discipleship if he avoids persecu¬ 
tion or suffering in any form for the sake of the 
Master and His teachings . 

This is the true suffering, that God’s will may 
be done, and the true Christian is often recognized 
by his willingness to accept suffering of this char¬ 
acter, and bear it bravely. Such suffering Jesus 
taught. 

But this is a very different kind from the suf¬ 
fering produced by disease or disaster, caused 
either by sin or ignorance; and Jesus not only did 
not suffer in this way but He fought it as an evil 
and as against God’s will. 

There may be a sorrow, an abiding pain in 
real Christian suffering, but there is also an inner 
joy which more than compensates. Otherwise, we 
do not glimpse the meaning of the words: “Blessed 
are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute 
you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, 
for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


great is your reward. ... If they have perse¬ 
cuted me, they will also persecute you.” 

But with sickness, infirmity and death there 
was never any counsel of acceptance or submis¬ 
sion, but rebuke and overcoming—all for God’s 
glory, and that His will be done. 

No other explanation of the wonderful words 
of the Master is compatible with the reconstruc¬ 
tion of God’s character as revealed by Him. 

This book is offered with the hope that it may 
bring to many a glimpse of the real power that 
lies behind a true knowledge of God’s will and 
plan, which may be obtained by clearing away the 
misconceptions of the past. To say we cannot 
know the will of God is to shut our eyes and ears 
to the simple teachings of Jesus. 


H. B. W. 


CHAPTER I. 

“THY WILL BE DONE.” 


"VjEVER can there be any great progress made 
L ^ in the efforts to renew and restore the gift 
of healing to the Church at large until there has 
been a clearing away of the false theology sur¬ 
rounding the atonement of our Lord in His death 
upon the Cross, and a complete reversal of the 
popular conception and teaching of the character 
of the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

For many generations it has been the function 
of the preachers of all denominations to teach 
that in great disasters, illnesses or bereavements 
God’s hand is to be seen, either exercising a 
needed discipline or working out some plan which 
would, eventually result in good. Especially has 
this teaching come to the front at times when 
there were many innocent victims in distressing 
catastrophes, or in the sudden and mysterious 
taking off of some young person, noted for good 
works. 

Wherever there appeared a tragic upheaval 

8 


“THY WILL BE DONE” 


9 


in the scheme of human life, which seemed irre¬ 
concilable with a standard that was good and 
equable, and which moved the soul to resent¬ 
ment, the conventional religious teachers have 
stepped forward, and with a view toward com¬ 
forting the distressed soul and saving it from re¬ 
bellion, have said: 

“We must not rebel against God’s will. It is 
all for a good purpose.” 

Then, according to the nature of the case, the 
questions would come: 

“But why should my child be taken in this 
way?” 

“But why should I suffer these awful pains?” 

“But why should my husband have his life so 
cruelly crushed out when he was doing so much 
good in the world?” 

It makes little difference what the character of 
the despairing, searching, bewildered cry may be, 
the answer has been invariably the same: 

“We cannot question God. We only know that 
He loves us; that His plan for us is good and for 
the best and that ‘some day we will understand.’ 
We must remember our Lord’s prayer in the Gar¬ 
den that the cup might pass from Him, and when 
God did not answer that prayer, He said, ‘Never¬ 
theless, not my will but Thine be done . 5 So we 


10 


GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


must learn to say, ‘Not my will but Thine be 
done.’ ” 

This is an argument which seems unanswerable. 
It usually closes the discussion. It may have had 
a benumbing mental effect and a tendency to lead 
the hearer into a state of conventional Christian 
resignation, but it never yet satisfied a yearning, 
grieving soul, reaching out to God in its grief and 
craving a ray of comfort in some sort of Divine 
response or explanation. In innumerable in¬ 
stances it has been rejected; and as it was con¬ 
sidered the official teaching of the Church, and 
the revelation of the character of God, both 
Church and God have been rejected also. 

In presenting the experience of Jesus in the 
Garden to answer the questioning of those stricken 
with disease or misfortune the teachers of the 
Church have for centuries been presenting logical 
fallacies. In deductive reasoning, the fallacy is 
that of “accent,” where a phrase stripped of its 
context is given an entirely different meaning. In 
inductive reasoning, it is an error of “appercep¬ 
tion,” seen in the tendency to be too much biased 
by past training and habits of thought. 

A little investigation and study will reveal these 
fallacies. That is why the argument fails to 
satisfy the soul. If a flaw can be found in it by 


“THY WILL BE DONE” 


11 


the exercise of the mental faculties alone, it is 
easy to see why the spiritual faculty should fail 
to discern Divine light and receive solace. 

Without going too far into the purely academic 
side, the main difficulty will be discerned when it 
is stated that in using our Lord’s experience in 
the Garden a case is presented that is not analo¬ 
gous. Jesus was not suffering from any disease. 
He was fighting a spiritual battle and a moral 
battle which involved the possibility of physical 
violence to His Person. 

In the case of sickness, disease and accident, it 
is a case of a physical battle only, although it may 
have unfortunate moral or religious results. 

We see, in some cases, religious harm resulting 
when one is told that his physical pain is part of 
God’s will and that he therefore should submit 
and accept it. The belief of that person in the 
character of God is likely to be shaken, especially 
if the suffering has not been caused by any fault 
or sin on his own part. 

Even if the belief of a person is not shaken by 
such a message, even if he accepts it and submits 
with what is considered a pious resignation, he 
has been given a warped view of God, a faulty 
view, a view that is an affront, to God’s love and 
nature. 


t 


12 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 

So in either case moral and religious harm has 
been done by the analogy. Between the one who 
rejected God for this teaching and the one also 
who still held a belief in Him, coupled with such 
inhuman cruelty, I frankly would prefer to be 
classed among the former. I could not pledge 
allegiance to nor worship a God who would plan 
and execute such unspeakable cruelty and in such 
an illogical, whimsical way. I demand a God 
who has a moral standard at least as high as the 
moral standard I am capable of comprehending. 
The standards implanted in us are those of Jesus. 
I hold fast to the God of love and tenderness as 
revealed by Him and I refuse to accept the God 
of the theologians and the reflections on His char¬ 
acter in many of the prayers, which are in direct 
opposition to the simple teaching of Jesus, as con¬ 
tained in the Gospels. 

I am not unmindful that I have been dealing 
only with the innocent sufferer. Our principle is 
not limited to such cases, but may be applied to 
others. Let us take the case of a man or woman 
suffering pain or illness brought on as a direct re¬ 
sult of wilful sin on his own part. 

Here, certainly, the analogy of Gethsemane 
fails, for what possible comparison can there be 
between the spotless, sinless Christ, wrestling with 


“THY WILL BE DONE” 


13 


a call to complete sacrifice, and a defiled sinner, 
reaping the physical consequences of wrong do¬ 
ing? 

Even to such an one it is wrong to suggest that 
it is God who is thus causing the suffering in order 
that He may chasten and restore. It is again a 
false theology that sets God up to sinners as one 
who hunts them down for their misdeeds and in¬ 
flicts a penalty because His laws have been broken. 
Nowhere did Christ reveal a Father of this char¬ 
acter. In none of His words or acts can we find 
any basis for this theology. The punishment that 
any wilful sinner suffers is self-inflicted and does 
not fall from the hand of an avenging God. 

(Note: Supporters of this theory find them¬ 
selves facing a great dilemma in the escape of the 
wicked, in many instances, from any physical suf¬ 
fering. I have treated this point at length in a 
previous book, Does Christ Still Heal?) 

God does not punish. Our Lord revealed this 
in His treatment of the young man who was a 
sinner. He forgave his sins, which He saw was 
the greatest craving and deepest need in this man’s 
heart and soul, and then restored the physical 
health, which had been impaired by the evil living. 

God’s work is to create, forgive, heal and re¬ 
store . The only punishing or destructive forces 


14 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


are to be found in the powers of evil set in opera¬ 
tion by the rebellious will of man, working against 
God, rejecting His plan and spurning His love. 

So to the innocent sufferer through disease or 
bereavement, as well as to the sinner, we cannot, 
if we be true to Christ’s teaching, suggest that it 
is God’s will that is being done, and offer, as con¬ 
solation, the words spoken in the Garden. To do 
this is to offer a false consolation, a comfort that 
does not soothe, and to bestow upon God, the 
Father, a character that is foreign to His nature 
and His will as revealed by the Son. 


CHAPTER II. 

CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD’S WILL. 


VIT’E are to consider in this book one of the 
” greatest problems man has ever faced. It 
is a problem that embraces the heathen as well as 
the most civilized Christian mind. It is of para¬ 
mount importance to any one who has a God of 
any kind, whether it be the fancied spirit within 
the totem pole or the one God accepted by Chris¬ 
tians. 

What is the will of that Deity for the disciple? 

The question is age-long, as long as the history 
of man. 

For the average Christian, confronted by mys¬ 
terious suffering from a stubborn disease, or by 
sudden death, the answer seems always to have 
been limited to the single trial in the Garden: 
God’s will was revealed in the suffering He sent 
upon His Son. Therefore, although it is mys¬ 
terious, although we cannot fathom its purpose, 
it must be accepted. This is the usual explana¬ 
tion. 


15 


16 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


In forever and incessantly applying this one text 
to disease and death, Christians are guilty of two 
errors: 

T. They misinterpret the text by stripping it 
from its context. 

2. They actually represent Jesus as being un¬ 
certain with regard to the will of God . They 
infer that He was endeavoring to avoid an 
act which constituted an expression of God’s 
will. 

Finally, they ignore the numberless statements 
in which He claims a perfect knowledge of that 
will, and demonstrates His joyful compliance with 
it. Therefore we shall better understand the Gar¬ 
den scene, and the prayer uttered there will be 
given its true meaning, if we consider briefly the 
attitude of Jesus with regard to God’s will, and 
His oneness with it, as exhibited throughout this 
life. 

I shall not pile text upon text but shall only 
offer that which I feel will be convincing and 
which I hope may prove inspirational to further 
reading. St. John’s gospel alone will be sufficient 
for our present purpose. 

At the very beginning of His ministry, His pas¬ 
sion that He might express the will of God in 
human acts and words is seen in the statement 


CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF IT 


17 


‘‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.” 
(St. John 4:34.) It is metaphor. That ideal is 
the food which sustains Him. It is the nourish¬ 
ment of His life. 

In the healing of the impotent man, this claim 
of oneness with and knowledge of the will of God 
brought Him into His first great controversy with 
the Jewish leaders. When they took Him to task 
for breaking the Sabbath He claimed He worked 
as God’s instrument. “My Father worketh hith¬ 
erto (in this manner and up to this time) and I 
work.” This made matters worse for Him and 
they sought to kill Him, because He not only had 
broken the Sabbath, but had said also that God 
was His father, making Himself equal with God. 
Jesus answers them by making the truth which 
had enraged them even more definite. He claims 
He does nothing by Himself, but what He seeth 
the Father do. “For what things soever He 
doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” (St. 
John 5: 19.) Later He reminds them that He 
does not seek His own will but the will of the 
Father which hath sent Him. (Verse 30.) In 
the following chapter He tells them again: “I 
came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, 
but the will of Him that sent me.” (St. John 

6:3 8.) 


18 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


His Teaching Reveals God’s Will. 

When He began to teach in the temple, He 
was met by the same hostile criticism which His 
works had brought upon Him. His answer was 
the same. It was nothing new He taught or any¬ 
thing of His own creating. “My doctrine is not 
mine, but His that sent me.” (St. John 7: 16.) 
He appeals to the will of God for proof of His 
position. Any man, He says, who is consecrated 
to the performance of the will of God will be able 
to recognize the character of His doctrine, 
“whether it be of God, or whether I speak of my¬ 
self.” (St. John 7: 17.) 

The Heart of the Problem. 

I feel that in the above verse lies the whole 
heart of the problem as well as the answer. Jesus 
raised the highest standard possible to man: i. e., 
perfect conformity to the will of God . He was 
willing to rest the value of His teaching, His 
words, and works upon the perception of those 
who had attained that standard. There is also 
included in the thought, that the desire to per¬ 
form God’s will, will result in substantiating, in 
man’s heart, the truth of His position and revela¬ 
tion. A very great dilemma is presented to those 


CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF IT 


19 


who stumble at the teaching of Jesus. To those 
who questioned it at that time and who failed to 
catch His vision, He said: “I am not come of my¬ 
self ; but He that sent me is true, whom ye know 
not.” (St. John 7:28.) Later, to the same 
critics, He said: “If ye had known me, ye should 
have known my Father also.” (St. John 8: 19.) 
Again He points out the secret of their failure to 
accept His teachings: “He that is of God heareth 
God’s words; ye therefore hear them not, because 
ye are not of God.” (St. John 8 : 47.) 

We shall never obtain a true conception of the 
nature of the controversy which brought forth 
these denunciations from Him unless we realize 
they were not spoken to ignorant peasants but to 
a group of theologians and scholars and those who 
were leaders in the Jewish religion, and the offi¬ 
cial exponents of the worship of God. 

In the course of His defence, which comprises 
nearly all of the eighth chapter, and which I ear¬ 
nestly hope will have close reading, He tells them 
several times that He speaks only those things 
which He has heard of the Father and also that 
He “does always those things that please Him.” 
(St. John 8. 29.) 

In starting to heal the man born blind, He an¬ 
nounces that He “must work the works of Him 


20 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


that sent me.” (St. John 9:4*) Following the 
violent controversy which then ensued, also over 
an act of healing, He again stakes all upon His 
perfect harmony with God’s will. “If I do not 
the works of the Father, believe me not.” (St. 
John 10:37, 3 8 -) 

The entire ninth chapter is a striking presenta¬ 
tion of the contrasting opinions of the character of 
God held by the Jewish leaders and Jesus. First, 
the disciples had to be shown that God was not 
the author of blindness. Then the Jews felt the 
honor of God had been blemished because the act 
of mercy had been performed on the Sabbath. To 
the Pharisees such an act proved Jesus incapable 
of real relationship with God. “This man is not 
of God.” (Verse 16.) They set up God and 
Moses against Jesus and reviled the man who de¬ 
fended Him. The bitter controversy, theological 
to the last degree, goes on throughout the tenth 
chapter, all of which should be read as a com¬ 
mentary on the ninth chapter and its problems. 
It again results in an attempt on His life, all over 
an act of healing performed, in the eyes of the 
Jews, qpntrary to God’s will. 

In His final talk with His disciples, which be¬ 
gins with the fourteenth chapter of St. John, He 
summarizes again and again the perfect harmony 


CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF IT 21 


of all that He has done and said, with the will of 
God. To the yearning appeal of Philip, for a 
clearer revelation of God, He makes the une¬ 
quivocal reply, “He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father. . . . Believest thou not that I am 
in the Father and the Father in me? The words 
that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but 
the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the 
works.” (St. John 14:9, 10.) 

The extension of God’s love and the expression 
of Jesus’ love are inseparable. A disciple’s love 
and obedience to His words will result in an out¬ 
pouring of love from God. This is because His 
words are so truly a reflection of what God would 
say. No doubt can remain on this point when He 
says: “And the word which ye hear is not mine, 
but the Father’s which sent me.” (St. John 14:21- 

2 4 *) 

These three chapters (14th, 15th, and 16th) 
are made up of constant repetitions of this great 
theme, uttered with almost every conceivable 
variation. 


His Consciousness of Power. 

Two other aspects of His knowledge of God’s 
will and of the purpose in revealing that will, 
have an important bearing on our subject. 


22 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


1. His purpose in all that He did and said 
was that God might be glorified. 

2. His aim in this respect was so single- 
minded that He possessed practically perfect con¬ 
fidence in God’s presence and power . There was 
no question in the mind of Jesus as to the real 
will of God in everything that He said; in every 
act that He performed . 

These two points are combined very closely in 
the raising of Lazarus. Jesus said unto Martha: 
“Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest be¬ 
lieve, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” 
(St. John 11: 40.) 

A moment later, before He performed the act, 
He said: “Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast 
heard me, and I knew Thou hearest me always, 
but because of the people which stand by I said it, 
that they may believe that Thou hast sent me.” 

I feel it is hardly necessary for me to point out 
that after every act of healing Jesus was con¬ 
strained not to take glory to Himself, but to lead 
the people to glorify God. We read many times 
that this was so. “And the people when they saw 
it gave praise to God.” He said to others^ “Go 
tell what great things God hath done for you.” 
How He gathers up this aspiration in His final 
great prayer: “I have glorified Thee on earth: I 


CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF IT 


23 


have finished the work which Thou gavest me to 
do.” (St. John 17:4.) 

In concluding this chapter I again remind the 
reader that what I have presented here is intended 
merely as suggestion for closer, deeper reading on 
this subject, especially in St. John’s gospel. What 
I have presented, however, I feel is more than 
sufficient to justify me in the following summary: 

Jesus, in every thought, word and act was con¬ 
secrated to the performance of the will of God. 
In many instances He expresses Himself as being 
in perfect harmony with that will. He performed 
only God’s acts, spoke only God’s words, and did 
always those things that were pleasing to God. 

Those words of Jesus were a reversal of Jewish 
theology regarding God, His wrath, His punish¬ 
ments, His vengeance, and His hand in sickness 
and in death. 

Those works of Jesus were active expressions 
of God’s will in restoring, loving, healing, forgiv¬ 
ing, and steadily opposing and overcoming sick¬ 
ness, disease and infirmities of all kinds, and even 
going so far as to bring the dead back to life. 

The words and works were beneficent, health- 
bestowing, life-giving, joyous. Never a demand 
for a further sacrifice, never a delay in restoration 
after the heart was given to God in faith. Never 


24 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


a single instance either by word or inference that 
calamity was sent by God for chastisement, or 
that health should be delayed by God for a # good 
purpose. 

Jesus knew all this. Let us bear it in mind as 
we seek for light on the Garden Prayer. 

Jesus knew the character of the will of God and 
strove earnestly to reveal it to men. In spite of 
all this, the Christian world has placed upon that 
scene the Hebraic conception of the will of God. 

The Thesis. 

My thesis therefore is that by virtue of Christ’s 
knowledge of God’s will, the true meaning of the 
Garden Prayer will be shown to be that He was 
aiming for perfect instrumentality in the perform¬ 
ance of that will, not submitting in agony, as a 
victim under its inexorable and mysterious opera¬ 
tion. 

Supplementary Note. 

The difficulty with the true acceptance of the 
revelation of Jesus has always been the theological 
interpretation of those who see themselves as 
leaders. The same temper which marked the 
teachers among the Jews was continued in many 
who stressed theology in the Christian religion. A 


CHRIST’S KNOWLEDGE OF IT 25 


large number held and taught that God foreor¬ 
dained every event from the beginnni«ng. Others, 
while they did not go so far as this, taught that 
while God did not foreordain all events, He knew 
them without exception. Archbishop D’Arcy 
treats this problem in a masterly manner in Dr. 
Streeter’s book.* He presents it as above and 
writes: 

“But this latter view was but a weak yielding 
of the head to the heart. The old Predestinarians 
were perfectly right when they insisted on the 
strictest view of the doctrine, if held at all. Start¬ 
ing with one sole omnipotent Will and regarding 
all creation as the outcome of its decrees, it fol¬ 
lows that the end in every detail is certain from the 
beginning. Also the human will is but the instru¬ 
ment of the Divine Will, and it is vain to try to 
relieve the Almighty of responsibility for every 
human action, bad or good. Everything is exe¬ 
cuted in perfect accord with the original design. 
The evil man as well as the good man is a means 
by which God effects His purposes. 

“This doctrine, whatever the efforts made to 
qualify it or soften it away, can only be consistent 
by making God the Author of evil. Moreover, it 

* God and the Struggle for Existence. By Streeter and 
Others. Association Press. 


26 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


destroys the foundation on which it is built; be¬ 
cause in order to affirm the supremacy of the Di¬ 
vine Will, it denies the reality of the human will. 
Gaining our whole idea of will from our experi¬ 
ence of the faculty as it exists in man, we have no 
right to attribute it to God in a way which deprives 
man of it altogether. The theory breaks down 
philosophically as well as morally. The real 
problem is, how to combine in one scheme of 
thought a whole in which the human will retains 
its freedom of choice between good and evil, and 
at the same time the Divine Will secures the Uni¬ 
verse from moral catastrophe, and realizes the 
great purpose for which creation exists. Here is 
the difficulty which has always confounded the 
speculative theologian. If he affirms the sov¬ 
ereignty of the Divine Will, he annihilates the 
human will: if he secures human freedom, he 
denies the omnipotence of God. This dilemma 
takes us to the very heart of the great problem 
before us.” 


CHAPTER III. 

THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE. 


I. “Not my will but Thine be done” 

T APPROACH the consideration of the scene 
A where these words were uttered with deepest 
reverence. No more glorious battle was ever 
fought on earth than that which Jesus wrought out 
in the Garden of Gethsemane, and no historic 
phrase has ever been given such faulty interpreta¬ 
tion as this. That interpretation, popularly held 
and known as orthodox, rests upon the basis of an 
offended, angry God requiring reparation, ran¬ 
som, or sacrifice for the sins committed by His 
wilful, disobedient children, and that it was our 
Lord’s offering and surrender of Himself to pro¬ 
pitiate the Father, which gave character and mean¬ 
ing to the words He uttered. For many centuries 
scholars and ecclesiastics wrote volumes explaining 
this demand on God’s part for a sacrifice, and 
presenting the act of Jesus as the fitting offering 
to the Father in place of a degraded, sinful world. 

Different schools in the Church contested various 

27 


28 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


theories with deepest ardor, and when separations 
finally resulted, several of the denominations took 
as a basic part of their theology certain aspects of 
the atonement theory. 

It may be said that my interpretation, which is 
not in harmony with the so-called orthodox inter¬ 
pretation, is based likewise upon my special theory. 
In defence of this I would plainly declare that the 
opposite is true. The so-called orthodox inter¬ 
pretations are built upon the preconceived doc¬ 
trines in the Hebrew religion, based upon the 
necessity for sacrifice in every instance. Conse¬ 
quently every act, or every word that could be 
construed to support that doctrine or theory was 
grasped and applied. In several instances such in¬ 
terpretation does violence to the context as well 
as to the whole revelation of the mind of God as 
revealed by Jesus. I claim that such violence is 
done in the case of the conventional so-called or¬ 
thodox theory. 

It may easily be charged that I have my special 
theory and that I am shaping these words so that 
they will fit my interpretation. I grant the same 
searching comparison that I apply to the other 
theory. I claim that my interpretation does not 
do violence to the text and that it is in proper 


i 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 29 


harmony with the whole context of the revelation 
of God’s Mind, made by Jesus of Nazareth. 

I am content to rest my case upon the words 
and acts of Jesus as set forth in the Gospel, and 
I find that my interpretation receives endorsement 
and support throughout, and that the other theory 
finds no basis in the Gospel record. It takes its 
rise from the sacrificial system of the Old Testa¬ 
ment. As a matter of fact, hundreds of the 
clergy have long since abandoned the theory of 
the atonement, which comprised the most impor¬ 
tant articles of belief in their various denomina¬ 
tions. Some have frankly repudiated these old 
beliefs in their sermons. Others, however, have 
discarded them as untenable but have said nothing 
and have offered no explanation to clear up the 
conventional doctrine. 

Upon the proper interpretation of these words 
rests one of the most vital aspects of Christian 
truth. Their constant misinterpretation by offi¬ 
cial teachers has driven many people from God 
and has kept multitudes who were seeking Him, 
from finding Him and truly knowing Him. The 
true interpretation will win many to Him, and re¬ 
veal Him, in His true character to those now 
seeking blindly. 


30 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


I appeal most earnestly, therefore, to those 
who have found the quest unsatisfactory and mys¬ 
terious, to free their minds from early prejudices 
and to refuse to apply Old Testament customs, or 
texts from St. Paul’s epistles, to this revelation of 
Jesus. The Master, by word and deed, set aside 
many of the fundamental religious conceptions con¬ 
tained in the Old Testament. We must also re¬ 
member that much in St. Paul’s writing was 
directed to a certain type of mind and dealt with 
many problems which do not exist in the present 
day. In spite of his great zeal, his conception of 
Christianity was colored to a considerable extent 
by the strong Hebraic influence from which he 
strove so obviously at times to free himself. This 
subject is expanded in a later chapter, “God and 
the Theologians.” 

The life and words of Christ are superior to 
the life and words of St. Paul, and when we admit 
that, we do St. Paul no discredit; nor do we dis¬ 
honor him or belittle his wonderful epistles by 
placing them second in importance to the Gospels. 
But second in importance we do place them. The 
Gospels come first. That is our field of action and 
that is our challenge. Upon that ground we shall 
stand. 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 31 


II, Placing the Responsibility, 

As one frees his mind from old theories he finds 
there are no facts in the teachings of Christ upon 
which to build the theory (i) that God sent Him 
into the world to die, (2) that it was necessary 
in the Divine plan for Him to die upon the Cross, 
as a ransom or that God demanded such a sacri¬ 
fice, or (3) that it was the Divine plan to redeem 
the world only through the crucifixion of Jesus. 

Against the theories which have been built up 
on the false interpretation of this one phrase, 
“Not my will but Thine be done,” there are many 
words of Jesus Himself which contradict the 
whole system. 

Immediately after St. Peter’s confession of his 
Master as the Christ (the anointed one), Jesus 
began to show unto His disciple “how that He 
must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of 
the elders and chief priests and scribes and be 
killed and be raised again the third day.” When 
St. Peter tried to dissuade Him from this, He re¬ 
buked him, telling him he savored not of the things 
that be of God, but those that be of men. (St. 
Matt. 16: 21-23.) Then He sets forth the prin¬ 
ciple upon which He is acting, which is more valu- 


32 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


able than life itself; i. e., “for whosoever will gain 
his life shall lose it.” (St. Matt. 16: 23-25.) 

Later, while on the way to Jerusalem, He took 
the twelve apart and said to them, “Behold, we 
go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be 
betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the 
scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and 
shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to 
scourge and to crucify” (St. Matt. 20: 18, 19.) 

In St. Mark’s gospel, there is a slight varia¬ 
tion of these words, as Jesus says unto the dis¬ 
ciples: “The Son of man is delivered into the 
hands of men and they shall kill Him.” (St. 
Mark 9:31.) 

St. Luke gives practically the same account, 
using the identical words found in St. Matthew’s 
gospel. (See St. Luke 9:22.) St. Luke, how¬ 
ever, gives an interesting post-resurrection ac¬ 
count, where this angelic message is given to the 
women at the empty tomb: 

“He is not here, but is risen. Remember how 
He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, 
saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the 
hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third 
day rise again.” (St. Luke 24:6-7.) 

Those who were demanding and were to ac¬ 
complish the death of Jesus were the chief priests 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 33 


and scribes, all of whom were designated as “sin¬ 
ful men.” He was to be scourged and crucified 
and killed by them. He was to be delivered into 
the hands of men. They were the ones who were 
demanding His death, not God, His Father. 

If God were the agent demanding a sacrifice to 
appease His wrath, or to bring about a world!s 
redemption, to what a place of honor would not 
Judas Iscariot be raised? He would have been 
but the chief actor in a great drama, planned ac¬ 
cording to the will of God. Let our Lord } s own 
words oppose this conclusion. “JVoe unto that 
man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. }) No 
service to God was done in this shameless barter 
which led to the seizure of the truest of all Friends, 
that His enemies might slay Him. There was no 
reward to Judas for an awful duty, which he must 
perform as part of God } s plan. On the contrary, 
his act resulted in the loss of his soul. 

“None is lost save the son of perdition.” 

What a commentary on broken friendship were 
this: “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted 
up his heel against me.” What deeper tragedy 
could one portray than this: “None is lost save 
the son of perdition.” 


34 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


If those who nailed him to the Cross were even 
the unconscious instruments of God’s will, how 
could Jesus, hanging there, pray for them: 
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do.” 

From the first words Jesus uttered concerning 
His passion, to the very end, we have no testi¬ 
mony of the operation of a Father’s will, but 
continuous evidence that the execution was con¬ 
ceived, demanded and performed by evil men. 

Free Will the Great Factor. 

This will becomes much plainer to us as we 
keep in mind two great facts: 

1. That God has never withdrawn the gift of 
free will from man. To do this would reduce us 
to mere automatons and render service to Him 
mechanical; and true loyalty, impossible. His 
Kingship is indeed regal in that we are given the 
privilege of choosing to become His subjects. We 
possess full liberty to refuse to serve and even to 
reject. 

2. We must recognize that there is a vast dif¬ 
ference between purpose and permission. Most 
of our difficulty in understanding Christ’s life, and 
God’s way, lies in our confusion of these two 
terms. They seem to mean the same thing to 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 35 


many, even to many theologians. Ofttimes we 
use them alternately to express the same idea or 
fact, but they are as vastly separated in thought 
as the poles. 

In bestowing the gift of free will upon man, 
God, in reality, grants him permission to choose 
and perform evil. But such a course is against 
His will, and consequently, against His purpose. 

God’s will and purpose can never be identified 
with anything that is evil, else God would be con¬ 
fessing the weakness of the plan that is the good 
plan or the God-plan. That good may appear to 
come out of evil is no evidence that God resorted 
to evil to accomplish His will, but that the power 
of God was stronger than the power of evil in 
that particular instance. 

Jesus Possessed Free Will. 

We must also realize that in Jesus, as perfect 
man, there was the same gift of free will and 
capacity for choice we see in other men. To have 
been without this would have rendered His ser¬ 
vice automatic. But it was not so. He was 
tempted in all respects as we are. 

God sent His son into the world, not as a God 
—a perfectly supernatural Being—to frighten 
mankind into accepting His Kingship and to en- 


36 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


force allegiance; but as man, to show forth the 
Father’s love in human terms, inhuman words and 
deeds, and to invite loyalty. 

In all this, His plan permitted the exercise of 
free will to the fullest. If men chose to reject 
Him and His son, He would not swerve from His 
purpose or even resort to compromise by using 
violence against mankind in time of danger or by 
withdrawing His son. Jesus entered into that 
plan, accepting human limitations, and He deter¬ 
mined to remain true to that plan to the very end, 
subject to all its limitations and willing to accept 
even the results of violence at the hands of evil 
men. 

It was not what the Father willed, but how and 
when He was to perform that will that Jesus was 
always meditating upon. He never thought for 
one minute that it was the Father’s will that He 
should suffer death by violence. Men alone were 
the instigators and instruments. He realized that 
the Father must permit it, should it become inevit¬ 
able, or else withdraw the gift of free will from 
mankind. By doing this God could have pre¬ 
vented the crucifixion. 

By exercising His right of choice, Jesus also 
could have avoided the death. He could have left 
Jerusalem and remained away until the tumult 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 37 


had ceased. He could have hidden Himself as 
He had on previous occasions when He escaped 
out of their hands. He knew the character of 
the errand of Judas. He knew enough of the 
laws of nature to walk away on the water where 
they could not easily follow Him, or He could 
have called upon the legions of angels to defend 
Him. He speaks of this invisible power right 
after the moment of betrayal. He refused how¬ 
ever to resort to any of these measures. He de¬ 
termined that it was not God’s will that He should 
further utilize these powers to end the persecu¬ 
tion. 

The prayer He offered then was the natural one 
of Him who bore flesh, who foresaw physical 
pain, great mental anguish and destruction, yet 
who was consumed by the desire to do and say 
those things which would harmonize with the per¬ 
fect will of God. He knew the Jews were deter¬ 
mined upon nothing short of His execution. He 
knew it was not His Father’s purpose, so that was 
then His prayer, “Let this cup pass from me. 
Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done.” 

By that He meant:—“Thy will be done in en¬ 
abling me to bear well and without swerving the 
ordeal through which I am about to pass.” Not 
for one moment in that prayer did our Lord con- 


38 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


nect the Father with sending upon Him the suffer¬ 
ings He was about to undergo. If this were so 
all of His former words would be emptied of their 
meaning. So, sustained by prayer of consecration 
to the higher will, the great love drama was 
worked out. 

“Love so amazing, so Divine 
Demands my love, my life, my all.” 

A Hard Fought Temptation. 

Much clarity will be thrown on the subject if 
we view the whole scene, including the approach, 
in the light of a great temptation. It will be 
found in accord with the principles of the former 
temptations of Jesus in the desert. In them the 
temptation was to establish the Kingdom by means 
other than those in God’s plan. (i) Fie w T ould 
not miraculously minister to His body; (2) He 
would perform no wonder, or test God by such 
act; (3) nor would He compromise by admitting 
that evil could be accorded any allegiance. Here, 
in the Garden, it might be said that all these three 
temptations were merged in one great trial. There 
was again the instinct (1) to save the body from 
violence; (2) to perform a wonder; (3) to give 
the sign for which the Jews clamored and to com¬ 
promise. We can see these three forms appear- 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 39 


ing and re-appearing in quick succession from the 
moment of the arrest, through the trial and even 
to the very end. At every step of the contest we 
see His wondrous Figure giving battle to those 
evil forces and moving steadily on to victory. 

Minor victories are to be noted all along the 
way. One is seen at the very beginning; we might 
say at the moment He enters the shadow of the 
final scene. Jesus entered it with an exclamation 
of triumph, seeing clearly for the moment the 
certainty of His path: “The hour is come, that 
the Son of man should be glorified.” (St. John 
12: 23.) Then as He expands His purpose, the 
pressure of temptation is clearly shown in the de¬ 
pression that falls upon Him. As in previous in¬ 
stances, He meets it at once and puts it from 
Him; at times it is with a quotation and then an 
answer to it. Dr. Pym has caught this aspect of 
the scene and has presented it very helpfully:* 

“The method of His thought in face of such 
temptation is exactly illustrated in the twelfth 
chapter of St. John’s gospel. Dr. Moffatt’s 
translation gives it most clearly: ‘My soul is 
now disquieted. What am I to say?’ In the 
first sentence, probably a quotation from the 

* The Psychology of the Christian Life. T. W. Pym. G. H. 
Doran & Co., N. Y. 


40 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 



Scriptures, Jesus gives expression to a sense of 
foreboding or depression; this idea is in the sec¬ 
ond sentence immediately challenged; it is not 
allowed to become part of Himself. ‘What am I 
to say? Father save me from this hour?’ i. e., 
‘Shall I say—Father save me? Shall I in so 
doing regard the prospect as unbearable? Shall 
I contemplate the future as something that I have 
not the strength to endure?’ And then He gives 
His answer, thereby fixing His mind and will in 
the right direction: ‘Nay, it is something else 
that has brought me to this hour. I will say, 
Father, glorify Thy name.’ He rejects His 
own disquietude as a dominant idea in His mind 
and puts in its place the thought of the majesty 
and power of God the Father.” 

III. The Result of the Atonement. 

That which is called the atonement, as embrac¬ 
ing the suffering and death of Christ, had a two¬ 
fold result; and while we reject the idea of God’s 
purpose in that suffering, we may trace through 
it the eventual victory of His will made possible 
by the loyalty of Jesus. 

First, we recognize that the crucifixion did not 
destroy God’s plan for the world in sending Jesus. 
That purpose was a demonstration of love toward 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 41 


the world . Christ upheld that plan by the manner 
in which He exhibited the Father’s love and by 
the serenity with which He endured persecution 
for righteousness’ sake. How could one think of 
faltering or flinching in the face of danger, who 
had said, “I am the Good Shepherd: the Good 
Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep”! How 
could one who had said, “Greater love hath no 
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
friends,” be found wanting in practising the great 
act itself when the opportunity was presented! 
Love of that high character was demonstrated all 
through the passion,—to the disciples for their 
safety; to the servant wounded by Peter’s sword; 
to the thief upon the cross; to those who crucified 
Him, in prayer that the Father would forgive 
them. 

Furthermore, it resulted in setting before the 
world, for all ages, the supreme power of that 
love as a force stronger than death itself, and the 
establishment of a continued existence beyond the 
power of evil to inflict further harm. How per¬ 
fectly this is expressed in His address to the Jews: 
“Therefore doth my Father love me because I 
lay down my life, that I might take it up again. 
No man taketh it from me but I lay it down of 
myself . I have power to lay it down and I have 


42 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


power to take it again. This commandment have 
I received of my Father.” (St.John io: 17, 18.) 

The Character of the Appeal. 

“Thy will, not mine, be done,” was not a cry of 
resignation to a mysterious purpose of God, but 
the declaration of belief in a Divine Will that 
would result in victory. The Father’s will might 
be obscured, rejected, attacked or delayed; but it 
could not be defeated. “It was not the Passion, 
but the value of it that He could not see until He 
caught hints and hopes of it at the very end,” 
writes Dr. Orchard. 

IV. God’s Plan of Love. 

We must recognize that God knew full well the 
presence of evil in the world and that the Jews 
had failed in their Divine Mission to make Him 
known in His true character. While, with their 
lips, they carried on a system of worship that was 
almost perfect, their hearts were far from Him. 
The prophets had striven to bring this truth home 
to the nation, but they had been rejected. That is 
why Christ came. “And last of all He sent unto 
them His son.” Everything had been done but 
the withdrawal of the gift of free will. This 
would have lowered His Kingship to a level un- 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 43 


worthy of His nature. The very honor of God 
demanded that man be permitted to retain his 
choice of serving or rejecting Him. 

The stupendous character of this mission was 
fully recognized by Jesus. At the very awaken¬ 
ing of His consciousness He was confronted by 
the fact that the greatest evils He had to face 
were not so much these grosser sins, but the utter 
failure of religious leaders to represent God to 
the people in His true nature; and then hypocrisy 
in presenting Him in false aspects. This He saw 
at the age of twelve years. His aims were to 
work the works of His Father, to show forth God 
to the world in human form and in human terms; 
and secondly, in due time to prove the victory of 
the spirit of God in man over the world power 
and all the powers of evil, spiritual as well as 
material. 


Christ’s Freedom of Choice. 

How and when that was to be done, God left 
entirely in the hands of Jesus. If He was to 
suffer privation, persecution, and martyrdom, as 
prophets had before Him, such suffering as well 
as the time and place were to be left to the judg¬ 
ment of the Son. 

There are several instances in the Gospel rec- 


44 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


ords where Jesus could easily have suffered mar¬ 
tyrdom and died for righteousness’ sake, died for 
men, died for doing good. 

The first instance occurred after His sermon in 
Nazareth, when those who heard His words of 
rebuke were filled with wrath, “and rose up and 
thrust Him out of the city; and led Him unto the 
brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, 
that they might cast Him down headlong.” How 7 
He eluded them is not made clear. The implica¬ 
tion is that He utilized some law with which He 
was familiar. The fact that He did escape at the 
time is sufficient. The brief word states: “But 
He, passing through the midst of them, went His 
way.” (St. Luke 4: 28, 29, 30.) 

Again as a result of the controversy following 
the healing of the man born blind, the Jews were 
ready to stone Him to death for the utterances 
they termed blasphemous. Nor was this the only 
time He was in peril of death in this manner and 
on this charge. “Then the Jews took up stones 
again to stone Him,” we read in St. John, 10:31. 
“Jesus answered them: many good works have I 
shewed you from my Father; for which of those 
works do ye stone me?” 

The controversy continued until, exasperated, 
the Jew 7 s could no longer refrain from killing Him. 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 45 


“Therefore they sought again to take Him, but 
He escaped out of their hand.” (St. John 

I0: 39 *) 

It might have been thought most appropriate 
that He should suffer martyrdom in the temple— 
His Father’s house—while engaged in defending 
His Father’s honor. The opportunity presented 
itself several times but Jesus avoided it. One 
striking instance is recorded in the latter part of 
the eighth chapter of St. John, when He had been 
most sweeping in His denunciation of their failure. 
“Ye have not known Him, but I know Him and if 
I should say I know Him not, I shall be a liar 
like unto you. But I know Him and keep His 
saying. . . . Then took they up stones to cast 
at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of 
the temple, going through the midst of them, and 
so passed by.” (St. John 8 : 55, 59.) 

That this element of choice was being con¬ 
sciously exercised continually by Jesus is brought 
out very clearly in other parts of St. John’s gos¬ 
pel. At one time He would not go to Judea but 
ministered in Galilee “because the Jews sought to 
kill Him” (St. John 7:1)—at another time 
when His brethren urged Him to make Himself 
known to the world He told them, “My time is 
not yet come: but your time is always ready. . . . 


46 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


Go ye up unto this feast. I go not yet up unto 
this feast; for my time is not yet full come.” (St. 
John 7: 6-8.) 

As we see Him exercising His choice in avoid¬ 
ing the violence which would result in His death, 
so we see Him exercising that same choice in the 
conscious, voluntary acceptance of the time when 
He intends to avoid it no longer. 

This consciousness and resolution finds expres¬ 
sion in a note of exultation. Early in the week of 
His passion He announced to His disciples that 
“the hour is come, that the Son of man should be 
glorified.” (St. John 12:23.) He repeats this 
same thought immediately after Judas left the 
supper table on his mission of betrayal. “Now is 
the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in 
Him.” (St. John 13:31.) The identical thought 
forms the introduction to His great prayer after 
the supper. “These words spake Jesus and lifted 
His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is 
come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may also 
glorify Thee.” (St. John 17 :i.) 

1 

V. The Prayer in the Garden . 

According to St. John’s gospel, Jesus, at the 
conclusion of a very long prayer, which comprises 
the entire seventeenth chapter, went forth imme- 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 47 


diately to the Garden where He was betrayed by 
Judas. St. John does not record any further 
prayer in the Garden. In the other Gospels there 
is an account of a prayer in the Garden, which 
would indicate that Jesus was laying before the 
Father the ordeal which confronted Him, and 
asking for final guidance as to His acceptance or 
rejection of it. 

The material content of that prayer in the three 
synoptists is the same, although there are slight 
differences in the phrasing, which we note: 

In St. Matthew: “O my Father, if it be pos¬ 
sible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not 
as I will, but as Thou wilt. . . . Father, if this 
cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, 
Thy will be done.” (26:39-42.) 

St. Mark: “Abba, Father, all things are pos¬ 
sible unto Thee; take away this cup from me; 
nevertheless not what I will but what Thou w T ilt.” 
(14:36.) 

St. Luke: “Father, if Thou be willing, remove 
this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but 
Thine be done.” (22:42.) 

By this record we see that just prior to the mo¬ 
ment of betrayal there existed an element of un¬ 
certainty as to time and place. The conviction 
that He was to perform a great act of perfect 


48 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


love was clouded momentarily by the great re¬ 
sponsibility of personal decision. So He prayed 
about it in deepest anguish. He knew that He pos¬ 
sessed the privilege of choice. He knew circum¬ 
stances so well that He could have escaped easily. 
He still would have been the Christ, and the mar¬ 
tyrdom could be accepted at a later time. But 
He chose it at this time. 

In the bestowal of free will God permits man 
to choose the time and place for his evil deeds. 
He did not hinder Judas. If we hold that God 
had a purpose in placing Jesus on the Cross at 
that particular time and place we must also hold 
that He sent Judas to his horrible task of be¬ 
trayal. If this be the case we dare no longer 
regard him as a lost soul but as a servant who 
faithfully performed a very hard task for God. 
Such a theory is almost unthinkable. Its accept¬ 
ance would set aside the whole content of our 
Lord’s explicit teaching. Judas exercised his gift 
of free will by voluntarily choosing to become a 
thief and a betrayer of his Master. The whole 
plan was worked out by him and the evil men 
with whom he dealt. God did not interpose and 
Jesus did not attempt to escape it, although He 
was aware of the treachery of His friend, as any 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 49 


clear-minded man is aware of a friend’s treachery 
long before it has definite results. 

In like manner God permits His chosen, con¬ 
secrated servants to choose the time and place of 
doing acts that will show forth His love and His 
goodness. Surely if so much freedom is per¬ 
mitted to the children of darkness, it should not 
be thought strange if the children of light exercise 
as wise a choice and display similar if not greater 
discernment as to the time and manner in which 
they shall lend themselves to do what they believe 
the right thing in God’s sight. 

God is dependent upon man for the carrying 
out of His plan, for His good works, for the 
works that are done according to His will in this 
world; otherwise He would send angels to per¬ 
form them, or take away the gift of free will . 

So He was dependent upon Jesus for the supreme 
demonstration of His love, and the revelation of , 
His true character. 

Jesus of Nazareth finished this battle in flesh 
and blood, body and soul, upon His knees. He 
knew that He had done everything within His 
power to fulfill the first part of His mission. He 
had worked the works of God, had revealed His 


50 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


love and power in bringing health and peace to 
the bodies and souls of men everywhere. He had 
exhausted every act that God Himself could per¬ 
form for His people without doing violence to 
their wills or inhibiting the power of choice. If 
there remained any other act or word which might 
have been of value in inspiring faith in God or 
belief in His message, Jesus would have avoided 
the betrayal and set Himself to the task of per¬ 
forming that additional task. But there was 
none. Therefore He was ready to perform the 
second part of His mission, embodied in the prin¬ 
ciple He preached so unmistakably, i. e., to lay 
down His life, if necessary, that He might demon¬ 
strate the perfection of His love for His friends, 
and prove the superiority of the power of Love 
over the evil of this world and even over death 
itself. 

Jesus’ Will and God’s Will. 

That will of the Father to which Jesus subor¬ 
dinated His will was a will embodying the Perfect 
Law of Love. No one knew this stupendous fact 
so well as He, because the unity with that will 
had been His guiding passion all His life. Every 
act of love He performed, every gracious word He 
uttered, He attributed to the Father. 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 51 


Although there was in His human nature the 
instinctive shrinking from violence, torture and 
physical death, there was no contest in the Garden 
between the will of Jesus and the will of God. 
It is only the false theology and the unthinking 
popular interpretation which so presents the scene 
and which shamefully belittles Christ’s knowledge 
of God’s will and dishQnors the character of the 
Father. 

It was but the measurement of His will with 
the Father’s will as to the completion of His work, 
and in that completion to rest back in the assur¬ 
ance that the Father’s will would be performed. 

Jesus could not feel that it was the will of the 
Father that He should be slain in a brutal man¬ 
ner, any more than we can say that it was through 
the will of God that the early Christians were tor¬ 
tured and murdered. Love does not, cannot op¬ 
erate in that manner . 

Jesus therefore arose, not to do the will of God 
in meeting a death which had been planned for 
Him by the Father, but to show forth how the 
will of God, in a demonstration of perfect love, 
would meet the evil will of men and conquer it. 
It is only thus that we gain the full revelation of 
His prayer. “Nevertheless not my will, but Thine 
be done.” 


52 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


VI. The Answered Prayer . 

To many it may seem that Christ’s prayer was 
not answered, that there was a contest of wills 
and that God’s will was done, not Christ’s, and 
that He suffered on the Cross because of unan¬ 
swered prayer. Some theologians do not hesitate 
to point to this incident' as an example of unan¬ 
swered prayer. The popular interpretation pre¬ 
sents this dilemma and we cannot escape it. 

To consider it so not only dishonors God, but 
it really prevents a person from properly praying 
the prayer Jesus prayed, and which, according to 
His teaching and example, we ought also to pray 
in the face of evil or great suffering. 

The average Christian throughout the world 
prays that prayer and uses these sacred words in 
almost the opposite sense. When he desires to 
be free from some disease, he admits the proba¬ 
bility of God’s plan for his relief by praying “if it 
be Thy will.” Thus he actually presumes that the 
will of God may be definitely opposed to his re¬ 
lief, and so he resigns himself by accepting the 
false conclusion, “Not my will but Thine be done.” 
To this phrase also he resorts when stricken with 
some sudden bereavement, like the accidental 
death of a dear one. 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 53 


Thus again he attributes to God, in sending or 
retaining that evil, a character He does not pos¬ 
sess and also a character which Jesus did not so 
reveal. 

Jesus prayed a prayer of allegiance to and 
trust in the will of God; not a prayer of submis¬ 
sion or resignation, and that prayer was answered. 
In the face of a great evil about to befall Him, He 
prayed, “Thy will be done ” and God } s will was 
done! Not in the cruel scourging and nailing to 
the Cross, but in the revelation to the world, for 
all time, that the greatest evil could be overcome 
by love; that love could rise triumphant over the 
greatest of assaults; that love could conquer even 
death. u Love is stronger than death.” 

God’s will was done, not because of the cruci¬ 
fixion of Jesus by the Jews, but in spite of it. 

The Jews, because of their wrath against Jesus, 
believed they had eliminated a theological dis¬ 
turber, a national trouble maker, and had dis¬ 
posed of Him in a way that would not only end 
His influence, but serve as a warning to His fol¬ 
lowers. The whole world now admits the futility 
of the crucifixion from that standpoint alone, and 
recognizes that the act served as an inspiration 


54 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


to followers rather than a warning. A great ideal 
always thrives under persecution. 

With all the religious and civil power at their 
command, the Jewish rulers of the day crushed the 
Leader and scattered His band. Did ruthless 
force ever meet such signal defeat? Christ’s 
prayer was answered. God’s will was done. His 
prayer was that even although He was to undergo 
physical suffering in holding fast to His great 
principles, nevertheless “Thy will be done.” So 
we may paraphrase it without the slightest vio¬ 
lence or undue liberty. “Thy great goodness and 
perfect love will in some way be shown through 
and beyond this tragedy. And also grant that I 
may reflect Thy will during the treatment I am to 
receive at the hands of wicked men. This thought 
shall be in me as I go out to suffer: I shall show 
forth to all those who hate me and harm me, the 
character of Thy will expressed in acts and words 
of love.” 

He was to show all this in the crucifixion; not on 
the Cross that God sent t but on the Cross that He 
accepted, from the hands of evil men. Do not 
think we take anything from the glory of the 
Cross of Jesus by removing it from God’s hand. 
We add to it tenfold and give it a higher value. 

Love spurned and rejected would not flee; 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 55 


Love betrayed would still be loyal and true; Love 
cursed would bless; Love tortured and abused 
would use His failing breath to plead to the 
Father for the forgiveness of the beloved; Love 
done to physical death would live on, for Love’s 
sake! 

“Having loved, He loved unto the end”; to 
the very gate of death. There Love was to enter 
and triumph, even over the darkness of the tomb, 
for the benefit of the beloved! 

Thus the wondrous glory of the Cross is re¬ 
vealed. It is those who teach and believe God 
sent it, who strip it of its great truth. 

VII. Loss Through Misinterpretation. 

Many conventional religious teachers, unfor¬ 
tunately, with much sincere piety, speak of bear¬ 
ing one’s cross in the form of a loathsome disease, 
a distressing deformity, a chronic painful ailment, 
a sick and aged relative, a hasty temper, etc., etc. 
(Such allusions may be found in many devotional 
books!) Thus while cross-bearing is linked with 
one’s experience, its value is shattered because of 
the false emphasis placed on this sacred act. In 
no sense is there the slightest authority for this 
classification. Under this teaching, some sufferers 
resign themselves, as accepting God’s will, to 


56 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


hopeless invalidism; others accept the teaching, 
and because it comes from a theologian, their 
hearts are turned in bitterness against such an un¬ 
just, unloving God. 

Thus, in both instances, the whole value of the 
great spiritual battle Jesus fought and the great 
vision He had of God, is lost. To both classes 
the truth would have been of infinite help. It 
might have brought physical relief to the one and 
saved the other from atheism. 

Not until a Christian accepts this true inter¬ 
pretation is he enabled to pray that prayer as 
Jesus prayed it. The false interpretation gives 
it an entirely different character and he is pre¬ 
vented from linking himself with God and God’s 
will, as Jesus linked Himself. 

The popular prayer is the reverse of the truth 
as it represents God as a wrathful, punishing 
Father, who brings about or maintains an evil 
condition that some mysterious good may even¬ 
tually result, the outcome of which is hidden from 
human eyes and is contrary to human desires. 
This renders Love repugnant and because of this 
interpretation thousands have been driven from 
God. 

Thus the Garden Prayer was answered, and on 
the Cross the Father’s will was done and was dis- 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 57 


played to the world, not in sacrificing a Son, but 
in proving the power of love over the power of 
evil, by virtue of the co-operation of the Son with 
His will—a human will—linked with the Divine 
will. 

Following Christ’s thought, therefore, the 
Christian can pray: first—“Thy will be done in 
spite of the awful evidence of evil forces I see 
around me or obstructing me”; and secondly— 
“Thy will be done to me rather than my own 
will. Therefore, let me reflect Thy will. I know 
that if I trust Thy will and remain loyal to Thee, 
I shall receive comfort and strength in the knowl¬ 
edge that the apparent victory of evil is really 
defeat of evil. Thy will is Perfect Love, and 
Power, and All-Good, and will be victorious if I 
hold fast to it and follow its leading. With Thee 
I shall pass through the evil, rise above it and 
conquer it. Love is stronger than death.” 

VIII. The Refusal to Compromise. 

Practically all of the difficulty that has ob¬ 
scured this truth and shrouded it in unpleasant 
mystery will disappear when we recognize that 
one, so completely filled with the knowledge of the 
will of God as Jesus, could not possibly be mis¬ 
taken in the character of that will; nor were there 


58 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


any grounds upon which He could base a thought 
that it was His Father’s will for Him to be of¬ 
fered as a sacrifice. In ail the many words He 
gave us of the character and operation of the 
Father’s will we can find no sentence that would 
justify us in thinking that there was any place in 
that will for such a demand. 

The whole prayer in the Garden revolved upon 
the time, place and manner of performing the will 
of God to the limit of His capacity. Jesus felt 
that He had been called to perform a great volun¬ 
tary sacrifice in defending a principle. He knew 
it was coming and had long been preparing Him¬ 
self for the great crucial test. He knew that as 
God had given Him the vision of that principle of 
unselfish love, so God would bestow upon Him the 
strength to be loyal in the face of the greatest 
opposition. 

That vision required of Him not only the min¬ 
istry to the poor, the healing of the sick, and tne 
many acts of tender mercy toward those who were 
like sheep having no shepherd, but it demanded 
(i) fearless preaching to scorners, (2) denuncia¬ 
tion of hypocrisy among the religious leaders and 
(3) condemnation of material unrighteousness 
and shallow temple worship. 

This work required great courage on His part, 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 59 


not only because of the opposition of the powers 
of evil in all classes arrayed against Him, but 
because of the desertion of His friends, the dis¬ 
approval of those nearest Him. His relatives 
thought Him mentally unbalanced. 

Because He had been brave and true and would 
make no compromise, He faced physical extinc¬ 
tion, and the dissolution of His group of dis¬ 
ciples. Logically, it seemed as if it were a reck¬ 
less sacrifice of all that had been built up. All 
who believed on Him might lose faith and hope. 
In spite of their protestations of fealty to Him, 
He knew they would desert Him if a serious crisis 
arose. It did seem like taking terrible chances 
to accept the issue in such a public way, and in a 
manner which He felt would terminate so dis¬ 
gracefully. 

He bravely prayed and God answered the 
prayer in revealing to Him that it was the time 
to stand fast and accept the issue. 

Many think those words were weak words of 
meek submission to an awful ordeal being imposed 
upon Him by an inexorable God. Nothing so 
contradicts the truth. “Thy will be done,” was 
said not in resignation, but in determination. 

There was never any other thought in his mind 
than that of fitting Himself for perfect instru- 




60 GOD’S V/ILL FOR THE WORLD 


mentality in the performance of God’s will. He 
was consumed with this sacred passion. His ex¬ 
pression of God’s will was to be so perfect that 
He was to say to men the very words that God 
would say and to act the way that God would act 
toward men under all conditions. Here He was 
to be given the opportunity to shew forth God’s 
perfect love toward man. It was the supreme act 
of Perfect Love in the face of rejection. If man’s 
love were to be forced, Perfect Love would fail. 
Vengeance or violence of any kind would be for¬ 
eign to the character of Perfect Love. Man’s 
harm would be self-inflicted. It would be the hor¬ 
rible loss sustained by refusal to accept the offer¬ 
ing of Divine Love. 

Jesus stayed to have God’s will carried through 
in Him, and fought such a fight as the world never 
before saw. He gave men the most supreme ex¬ 
hibition of combined moral and physical courage 
possible for a human being, and which may be 
approximated only by those who, possessing all 
means to escape, stand and fight, forgetful of self, 
to show forth that greater love which offers itself 
for others and for Truth’s sake. 

In after centuries, Christian martyrs fought 
that fight and won, doing God’s will because of 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 61 


their refusal to compromise with the evil power 
of evil men, who offered them physical life as a 
reward. 

He who draws any theory of simple-minded y 
non-resistance from that scene fails to glimpse 
the glory of the struggle and misses all the gran¬ 
deur and inspiration of that most bravely fought 
conquest. 

Let him who desires to experience the char¬ 
acter of that battle struggle upon his knees with 
the thought of a compromise with the forces of 
evil in high places! 

This heroic aspect of Jesus in the Garden is not 
a mere fancy. It is fully supported by a signifi¬ 
cant incident related only in St. John’s account of 
the actual betrayal. As they came upon Him they 
found no cringing, submissive fanatic, in attitude 
of surrender; but a brave man, commanding and 
unafraid, and, moreover, ready to meet them. The 
nobility and dignity of His bearing astounded 
them. As they were about to seize Him, the very 
majesty and power of His presence awed them. 
They suddenly became aware of a strength never 
before encountered and “they went backward and 


62 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


fell to the ground.” (St. John 18 : 6.) Nor were 
they able to recover themselves for some time, so. 
intense was the radiating force of His Goodness. 
Virtue carries with it a tremendous protective 
power. The guards were so bewildered that St. 
Peter was given ample opportunity to smite with 
his sword. The command of Jesus to use it no 
more and His action in healing the wounded sol¬ 
dier brought the guards to their senses. If they 
were not to be smitten and consumed by this 
strange power which awed them and which they 
could not understand, they could go about their 
work and use the only power they did understand 
—physical force. Then they took Him. The dis¬ 
ciples were still dim of vision and fettered by 
material fears. They had not yet found the 
power of the spirit so they fled—save one. 

The law of love had been put in active opera¬ 
tion in a manner never before seen in the world. 
God’s way of dealing with evil was being mani¬ 
fested. “Do good unto them that persecute you.” 
They did not understand those words, did not be¬ 
lieve they could be put into practice. He was 
proving to them that they could. 

Later they blindfolded Him and then smote 
Him, yet He refused to use any of His power to 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 63 


avoid these insults or to repay in kind. Even the 
world applauds the duelist who permits his enemy 
to fire upon him, and then discharges his pistol in 
the air. Such magnanimity reveals the true victor 
and a man of great courage. The exhibition of 
Jesus was even more magnanimous and self-con¬ 
trolled; and brave to the last degree. It was an 
exhibition of how man could fight for the right 
and win against all the riches, the power, the 
forces, and hatred of political and ecclesiastical 
enemies in the world. The only weapon He used 
was consecrated love. That was the problem He 
fought out in the Garden; that was the cause of 
His deep searching into His own soul and into the 
mind and will of God. When He felt that in this 
crisis He had placed His will in harmony with the 
Father’s will He arose to follow that will at any 
personal cost and in the face of what would ap¬ 
pear to be failure and defeat. 

Therefore we cannot comprehend the content of 
that prayer until we see in it, not a wail of sub¬ 
mission, but a shout of triumph! It comprises the 
declaration of an unfailing trust in the power of 
God’s will to overcome, eventually, the evil 
forces that beset us. It is not significant of failure 
but of victory with God. 


64 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


HIS WILL BE DONE. 

By Annie Johnson Flint. 

“H is Will be done,” we say with sighs and trembling; 

Expecting trial, bitter loss and tears; 

And then how doth He answer us with blessings, 

In sweet rebuking of our faithless fears. 

God’s Will is peace and plenty and the power 
To be, and have, the best that He can give; 

A mind to serve Him and a heart to love Him; 

The faith to die with and the strength to live. 

It means for us—all good, all grace, all glory; 

His kingdom coming and on earth begun, 

Why should w^e fear to say “His Will—His righteous, 
His tender, loving, joyous Will—be done?” 


SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

Note 1. 

In that most inspiring book, The Christ That 
is to Be (Macmillan & Co.), Lily Dougal pre¬ 
sents very clearly an aspect of the subject treated 
in the preceding chapter. It appears in the chap¬ 
ter on “Physical Power,” in which she shows how 
divergent in many respects are the Christianity of 
Christ and the Christianity of the Churches. She 
faults the Church for her failure to insist upon 
universal friendship, for her willingness to use 
the sword, etc., etc. Then comes the conclusion 
which shows the secret of the fault. She writes: 


i?HE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 65 


•‘The reason of all this is that, in defiance of 
the gospel, the Church has never conceived of God 
as commonly moving in man’s material affairs ex¬ 
cept as the cause of inexplicable disaster or merited 
punishment. ‘Thy will be done,’ has been a wail, 
instead of a shout of joyful expectation. God has 
deserved better of us in nature, and a thousand 
times better in the revelation of Christ; and yet 
our saddest hymns, our most melancholy moods, 
have for their refrain the sentiment, ‘God’s will 
be done’; and we regard ‘resignation’ to woe as 
the highest attainment of the soul before God. 
This is true of the Church in the land of Luther, 
the nation of Knox, the city of Calvin, the conti¬ 
nent of the Pilgrim Fathers, as it is in those re¬ 
gions to which the Greek, Roman, or Anglican 
Churches desire to give exclusive light. In none of 
these branches of the Church does the acceptance 
of God’s will suggest any temporal advantage; the 
sentiment that ‘the visitation of God’ is direful, 
is writ large, not only in the liturgies, but in the 
legal forms, of Christendom.” 

Note 2. 

In his chapter entitled “The Social Interpreta¬ 
tion of the Cross”* Dr. Orchard presents the 

*“The Safest Mind Cure” Allen. London. 


66 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


subject with great clarity and inspiring strength. 
“Theories of atonement,” he says, “have not only 
proved unable to solve the problem; they have 
often been found the greatest hindrance to the 
acceptance of the Cross.” He analyzes the vari¬ 
ous theological and moral theories regarding them 
in turn and summarizes as follows: 

“It is not surprising that the failure of all these 
theories should have given rise to the impression 
that the whole idea of atonement is wrong. It is 
traced to a false notion that God needs placation, 
to the survival of the value of sacrifice for that 
purpose, and to the magical virtue once believed 
to reside in blood.” 

Two later paragraphs in this chapter will be 
helpful. They are as follows: 

“The Gospels are being studied as they never 
were before. The days of negative and niggling 
criticism are now over, and the life of Jesus is 
being seen in clear outline and His purpose made 
more intelligible. The necessity of Christ’s death 
is being found neither in an eternal decree that 
the Son of God must die to save mankind, nor in 
some mystical necessity for sacrifice to which 
Christ surrendered; but primarily in purely mun¬ 
dane and political circumstances. 


THE BATTLE IN GETHSEMANE 67 


“Theologians have tried to find the necessity 
of the Cross in God; in His refusal to let man off 
without a price; in His moral inability to forgive 
without someone being punished; or in His in¬ 
stinct towards sacrifice; all of them most unsatis¬ 
factory. But when it is traced to human sin, 
blindness and resistance, the necessity of the Cross 
is understood. Jesus had to die because of what 
man is. Theologians need not propound some 
penal or mystical theory.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

BASIS OF THE MISINTERPRETATION. 


'VjrHAT a glorious vista of the Christian life 
’ * Jesus opened by His great courage and in¬ 
spiring example, viewed from the aspect of a 
battle won—a triumph of love. What possibilities 
of strength are revealed to man! Yet man has 
interpreted this act in a manner that spells weak¬ 
ness to him. The very purpose of Jesus is re¬ 
versed. This is one of the greatest tragedies the 
world has ever known; and millions have been 
victims of that tragedy because they have not 
known the truth. God’s whole purpose and char¬ 
acter have been misinterpreted. Truth and light 
have been darkened. 

For centuries Christian men and women have 
believed that all sickness and death, even acci¬ 
dental, were the will of God; and in proportion 
as that belief was held, so they deprived them¬ 
selves of the power and strength and health that 
they could have received if they placed themselves 

truly in harmony with the will of God. They felt 

68 


BASIS OF THE MISINTERPRETATION 69 


it a pious duty to accept a disease or great sorrow 
from Him, and so were unable to discern the Lov¬ 
ing Will that yearned to lift that disease and sor¬ 
row from them. 

No religious thralldom has ever been so deadly, 
so destructive as this, and it all may be traced to 
the theologians and church teachers of all cen¬ 
turies, who, with the best of intentions, with most 
pious minds, have continued to fasten and main¬ 
tain this doctrine which is so opposed to the teach¬ 
ing of the Master. 

Throughout this book the cause of these misin¬ 
terpretations will be clearly seen, but a summary 
will be helpful at this point. 

The Hebraic Conception. 

A. This of course is fundamental. It is seen 
in various parts of the Gospel records. The long¬ 
ing for a Messiah who would set up a kingdom on 
earth was so deeply seated that the closest fol¬ 
lowers could not rid themselves of this ideal. 
After the Ascension it came back with tremendous 
force and for several generations practically all 
Christians were anticipating it during their life¬ 
time. The reported words of Jesus, containing 
His prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, in 
being copied, were confused with conceptions of 


70 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


the second coming, and this confusion stands in 
the record today. These accounts in St. Matt. 
24; St. Mark 13, and St. Luke 17:20, were 
eagerly looked forward to during the first century. 
In subsequent centuries whenever there have been 
unusual astronomical occurrences or very great 
wars, many Christians have looked upon them as 
signs of His coming. During the last great war, 
only a few years ago, this was preached in innu¬ 
merable churches of all denominations all over the 
world. Several sects, comprising millions of fol¬ 
lowers, are founded on this doctrine and from 
time to time prepare themselves for His visible re¬ 
turn; only to be disappointed and locate the time 
at some later year. 

That is the effect of only one Hebraic idea 
upon the Christian world. There are many 
others. Important among them is the doctrine of 
predestination and fore-ordination, which appears 
all through the Epistle to the Romans. See par¬ 
ticularly the ninth chapter and compare the 
Hebraic God revealed there with the Loving 
Father revealed by Jesus in the Gospels. 

B. The Hebraic conception also comes out 
very naturally in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 


BASIS OF THE MISINTERPRETATION 71 


This epistle was unquestionably of great value in 
reconciling questioning Jews to the teachings of 
Jesus, but it never should have been permitted to 
color and even distort the faith of those who 
were not Jews. Yet innumerable phrases have 
been stripped of their context in this epistle and 
made to figure in doctrine in a manner unwar¬ 
ranted by any exercise of common sense. In 
many Christian prayers for those in sorrow we 
are reminded that God “made the Captain of 
their salvation (Jesus) perfect through suffer¬ 
ings.” (Hebrews 2: 10.) Following the Hebrew 
system of sacrifices, Jesus is set forth as the final 
and highest type of sacrifice required by God; 
thus bringing to an end the Jewish system. There 
is hardly a prayer for the sick or the suffering to 
be found in any of the printed books of devotion 
of all denominations that does not refer to the 
phrase in Hebrews (12:6)—“whom the Lord 
loveth He chasteneth.” It is easy to explain that 
the word means “training,” as a child is trained, 
but the idea of real suffering, a scourging from 
His hand in token of mysterious love, is fixed in 
the average mind. 

I do not intend this summary to be exhaustive, 
but only suggestive. 


72 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


St. Paul’s Theology. 

St. Paul had the idea of the second coming 
firmly fixed in his mind and as he grew older he 
changed his opinion and warned his followers 
not to look for it. His work was a glorious one 
but we must bear in mind the fact that he wrote 
to certain classes and for people in a certain pe¬ 
riod. This subject is expanded in a later section. 

Hymns and Devotional Books. 

In many places what theological teaching sug¬ 
gested, hymn writers completed; and by poetfc 
phrases, aided by an appealing harmony, im¬ 
planted forever upon the minds, hearts and very 
souls of men and women, the doctrine of God’s 
will and God’s love being shown in suffering or 
death, and more particularly in His demand for 
the sacrifice of the Son. 

Cross-Bearing. 

Finally we see the tremendous confusion of 
thought developing to the extent that sickness and 
suffering and death are included in “cross-bear¬ 
ing.” One devotional writer of considerable re¬ 
pute does not hesitate to include such things as “an 
irritable temper,” “an inherited bodily weakness,” 


BASIS OF THE MISINTERPRETATION 73 


“a sick and troublesome relative” as “crosses 
which we must have to bear” 

How the true message of the Cross is utterly 
blotted out by such utter absurdities as these! 
How the beauty of that supreme act is reduced 
to the commonplace! 


CHAPTER V. 




THE TRUE MEANING. 

I. Suffering and the Cross. 

S we try to determine why the thought of 
suffering in every form is so closely linked 
with God, we see by very simple analysis that it 
begins with the words in the Garden, is connected 
with all the incidents of the passion, and leads to 
the Cross. 

Placed in this sacred atmosphere, and colored 
by the thought of a great redeeming love and 
sacrifice, sickness, deformities and minor evils, 
of which I have spoken, are given a dignity to 
which they are by no means entitled. A character 
is bestowed upon them for which no reason can 
be found in the teaching of Jesus. To designate 
any one of such evils as “a cross” is a false conso¬ 
lation, although one may take comfort in so do¬ 
ing; but the result is in many ways disastrous, as it 
seems to fasten on a person a disease or difficulty, 

74 






THE TRUE MEANING 


75 


which, if the teaching of Jesus were practised, 
could be removed. This teaching sprang largely 
from devotional writers drawn almost exclusively 
from the ranks of cloistered “religious” of both 
sexes, and who were influenced by the theory that 
there was a distinct enmity between the soul and 
the body, and that mortification of the flesh was a 
virtue in itself. Adherents to this school of re¬ 
ligious thought insisted upon taking literally the 
metaphor “crucify the flesh.” Some saints longed 
so earnestly to bear the sufferings of Christ that 
they reproduced in their hands signs of the nail 
prints, inflamed, swollen and bleeding. In their 
day such evidences of piety were considered mirac¬ 
ulous. Modern psychology and physiology show 
us plainly that these were but the natural results 
of intense auto-suggestion. 

While little theology of this character is written 
now, the better known devotional books are still 
sold in large quantities and this doctrine finds a 
prominent place in the instruction in all denomi¬ 
nations. It is the conventional and easiest thing 
in the world for a minister to keep referring to 
the “cross” in pointing out how to bear sickness, 
sorrow and other ills, and of all acts in religion 
it is the most “unthinking” thing to do. 


76 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


The Confusion of the Question. 

During my early efforts in the healing work, I 
wrote to a clergyman whom in my younger days 
I had considered a wise leader. I sent him the 
literature of the “Society of the Nazarene,” with 
our prayers for the sick, and asked for his criti¬ 
cism and advice. His reply was as follows: 

“It is hard for me to give you a criticism of 
the Rule and Prayers of your Society as I am 
so ignorant of the question. My feeling is that 
there is a tendency in our day to look upon suf¬ 
fering as the only evil, to be got rid of at all cost, 
and that awakens a mistrust in the various schemes 
of amelioration. This is unreasonable. The 
Cross, to my mind, means the sanctification and 
glorification of suffering, and we must have to 
bear suffering in the power of and for the love of 
Christ. Christ did not get down from the cross 
to convince men that He was the Son of God and 
the Saviour of the world, but rather by remaining 
on the cross He showed Himself to be divine, and 
accomplished the work of salvation.” 

Here we see a perfect illustration of the con¬ 
fusion of sickness with suffering on the Cross. To 
him they seemed incapable of separation. 

What this man wrote regarding suffering is per- 


THE TRUE MEANING 


77 


fectly true. Every true Christian must know 
something of the affliction or reproach of the Gos¬ 
pels, and rejoice in being permitted to participate 
in it; but the subject of disease does not come 
under that head and the two ideas cannot be com¬ 
bined. 

To suffer deep sorrow because of the sins of 
others; to bear patiently persecution, misunder¬ 
standing, and contempt and privation, because of 
our allegiance to the Master, is one side; and to 
suffer through an assault of sickness is an entirely 
different matter. With the former there is a cer¬ 
tain suffering that lies within the choice of man’s 
will to accept for Christ’s sake, for the sake of 
his brothers; or he may reject it, and be free from 
it. With the latter there is no such choice. A 
condition which is repulsive and evil is imposed 
upon man, often without any fault or wrong doing 
or even ignorance on his part. To me it is in¬ 
credible that any such visitation or accident is to 
be attributed to the will of God or considered as 
having been designed or sent by Him with a view 
toward chastening or strengthening one. He does 
not visit any of His lower creatures with disease 
in order to strengthen them. 

Some draw a pretty illustration of the pearl 
being the result of disease on the oyster. Others 


78 GOD'S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


speak of iron being refined in the fire. We should 
remember that the objects of these illustrations 
comprise in the one case a very low form of life 
and in the other an inanimate object. They are 
figures of speech, but some expect human beings 
to take them literally. 

If God does not purposely visit lower animals 
with disease for their development, why should 
we credit Him with such action toward the human 
race, whose capacity for suffering is much more 
keen? Such a plan is not in accordance with the 
purpose and will of God, who abhors disease and 
disorder. His hand is no more seen in the plague 
than it is in the catastrophe in which hundreds 
of young and innocent lives are blotted out, hor¬ 
rible injuries inflicted, and victims made hideous 
cripples and invalids for the remainder of their 
days. 

Having been stricken by disease or accident, 
however, I may prove the value of my Christianity 
by “suffering as a Christian” and, because of my 
faith in Christ and my belief in God’s Omnis¬ 
cience, I may turn the incident into an opportunity 
for spiritual strength. So long as my head is 
clear I will not humbly resign myself to my sick¬ 
ness with a falsely contented idea of a Fatherly 
“visitation,” mysteriously planned for some object 


THE TRUE MEANING 


79 


which may never be revealed to me; nor shall I 
pray as did one of the old saints—that his pains 
be not relieved so that he could continue to “suffer 
with Christ.” This is purely a warped and dis¬ 
torted view of God’s purpose. Of such morbid 
and fallacious reasoning the mind of man has had 
enough; the Church has already borne the burden 
of such thinking far too long; and it is time for 
every Christian man, woman and child to rid 
himself of it forever. 

The more fully I consider the character of sick¬ 
ness as a healthy minded Christian, the more I 
realize that it is foreign to God’s intention to 
prolong it, but rather it is His will that the sick¬ 
ness be overcome, the disorder readjusted, and 
that perfect health be restored, as soon as pos¬ 
sible. The entire mechanism of the body with its 
regiments of phagocytes and disease-battling ele¬ 
ments, and the latent forces that are called into 
action in time of crises, and the marvellous re¬ 
cuperative powers, prove all this. The drugless 
cures, the rest cures supervised by physicians, and 
the mental therapy of the day, support this posi¬ 
tion. A keen comprehension of these facts can 
hardly fail to have its value in assisting in the 
restoration of health. 

This condition again is different from the very 


80 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


popular “Gospel of Health” which really erects 
Health as the supreme goal to be attained if not 
actually worshipped. To followers of this cult, 
the presence of disease necessarily indicates evil 
or “error” as it is called. The same Christian 
can see many very healthy persons in whom there 
exists an enormous amount of sin and error, and 
on the other hand, some very unhealthy ones, 
whose unhappy conditions are the result of no 
fault of their own, but have been occasioned by 
the ignorance, sin, or carelessness of others, or 
by some unforeseen violence of the elements. 
Some, by their patience and courage, show forth 
glorious lives of great value to the world. But 
let not anyone say that he suffers under the hand 
of God’s visitation, for to so speak is to reveal a 
totally false conception of the goodness of God, 
of His tenderness and love and His ever-burning 
desire for the health and happiness of all of His 
children both in body and soul. 

I have no sympathy whatsoever, on the one 
hand, for those modern Christians who make a 
God of their health, nor on the other hand, for 
those who bestow upon pain and suffering, result¬ 
ing from disease, the character of a sacrament. 
Such assumption is not only unwarranted but is in 
opposition to the teachings of Jesus. 


THE TRUE MEANING 


81 


II. Jesus Accepting Suffering. 

Jesus did suffer great bodily pain on the Cross, 
but it was inflicted by the “hands of cruel and 
sinful men,” as He foretold. It is because I refuse 
to permit those in the Church who are opposing 
the work of healing to infer that they have a 
greater regard for these sufferings than we do, 
that I desire to make the issue still clearer. I 
do not want to minimize suffering or to gloss it 
over; I want to restore it rather to the true place 
in which it belongs. I want to take away the 
doctrinal trappings which have marred its real 
beauty and obscured its real message. 

The clergyman referred to in the preceding 
section said, “Jesus did not come down from the 
Cross.” How familiar that sounds. At the foot 
of the Cross they said, “He saved others, Himself 
He cannot save.” The confusion of thought in 
the minds of the Jews is not different from the 
confusion in the minds of many Christians. 

How He Saved Others. 

Jesus indeed saved others, but not from such 
predicament in which He found Himself. He 
saved others (i) physically, who were bound with 
disease, sickness and mental infirmities; and (2) 


82 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


spiritually, who were in bondage to an evil will 
or sinful desires. He saved them by restoring 
health and wholeness to bodies and minds in pro¬ 
portion to their faith in His word; and He saved 
them from their sins, by pronouncing forgiveness 
and bringing them back to conscious union with 
God. He indeed saved them, wonderfully. 

But nowhere did He ever promise His disciples 
immunity from physical suffering, such as He was 
undergoing; nor gave He any hint that He would 
save them from attack or violent death. On the 
contrary, He pointed out that their fidelity, as 
disciples, would most likely result in persecution 
and death. He told them about prophets who had 
been slain. He told them they would be hated 
for His name’s sake, not by the poor and ignorant 
but by the leaders in high places in their syna¬ 
gogues. This persecution was to be carried on 
in the name of God. He made this very clear to 
them in His last talk with them. “These things 
have I spoken unto you that ye should not be 
offended. They shall put you out of the syna¬ 
gogues, yea the time cometh that whosoever 
killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” 
(St. John 16: 1-2.) The disciple is not to think 
he is above the Master. “If they have persecuted 
me they will persecute you.” “If they have done 


THE TRUE MEANING 


83 


these things to a green tree what shall be done 
to a dry.” When this persecution comes they are 
to rejoice and be exceeding glad, because of pre¬ 
vious persecution of true prophets. St. Luke adds 
that He told them when persecution came they 
were to “leap for joy.” 

Jesus did not save John the Baptist from per¬ 
secution and death. John died for righteousness’ 
sake as other prophets had died before him. 
Moreover, he was in deep spiritual fellowship 
with Jesus. He saw truth in the light of God. 
Sin in a king’s palace was the same as sin in the 
street and because of his preaching he was im¬ 
prisoned. He met death because of his refusal 
to compromise. He died for the sake of the 
Kingdom of God. Jesus knew of his danger and 
of his death. He did not save John, because the 
latter valued spiritual liberty more than physical 
liberty. 

In spite of the clear-cut issue which resulted in 
the Baptist’s death, there are some theologians 
who actually present this case of “suffering” as 
an evidence against the restoration of the healing 
ministry. They seem unable to discriminate be¬ 
tween suffering by disease, and suffering through 
persecution, in spite of their totally different char¬ 
acter. Thus they render themselves blind to this 


84 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


great teaching of Jesus and so fail to present it 
to others. 

Jesus did save Himself from everything from 
which He saved others. He maintained a body 
in perfect health. There is only the mention of 
physical weariness, which is natural to prolonged 
work and prayer. He maintained His union with 
God by His consecration and constant conscious 
knowledge of God’s love and presence. He had 
perfect poise of body and soul. He had saved 
Himself in every way as He had saved others. 

Had Jesus come down from the Cross He 
would have failed to follow the very precepts He 
had preached; He would have set at naught the 
wonderful examples He had praised on the part 
of the prophets. He would have emptied of their 
meaning all the principles He urged upon His dis¬ 
ciples as being the highest evidence of their love 
for God and truth. 

The action of Jesus in accepting the persecution 
and in remaining on the Cross does not glorify 
sickness and suffering of any kind, whether 
through loathsome disease or violence that 
springs from accident, sin or ignorance. It rep¬ 
resents fidelity to a principle; a refusal to com- 


THE TRUE MEANING 


85 


promise with truth, even at the cost of a life. It 
is a battle for Right, for God and His Cause, 
and with God’s great weapon—Love. 

“There then, in the loving endurance of perse¬ 
cution,” writes Miss Dougal, “was the way that 
everyone who would advance the Kingdom must 
pass, until the Kingdom be universal. . . . This 
does not prove there is anything divine in suffer¬ 
ing; it proves that love is divine.” 

The Real Suffering. 

I have tried to show that rather than reading 
any of the “suffering” out of the example of Jesus 
on the Cross, I have, on the contrary, endeavored 
to set forth that suffering in its true light; re¬ 
vealing its true value by disassociating it from the 
conventional conceptions. I desire to make the 
character of suffering in the life of Jesus even 
plainer, so that His words and examples may 
have full meaning for those who need the guidance 
of His example today. 

The suffering of Jesus is conventionally limited 
to the passion and crucifixion. Really this period 
marks but the climax. At the very beginning of 
His ministry He suffered physically and mentally 
in the temptation to establish the Kingdom by 
some form of compromise with worldly or purely 


86 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


materialistic standards. He suffered rejection in 
His home village of Nazareth. Even His rela¬ 
tives and closest associates did not believe in Him. 
He suffered terribly, not only because of the lack 
of vision of God on the part of the leaders of 
the temple, but of their bitter hatred of His work 
in revealing the character of the Father to them. 
How He suffered because of the blindness of the 
people, who like sheep without a shepherd were 
afraid to follow Him! Probably the most poign¬ 
ant of His sufferings was to know the way to the 
peace and happiness of a people, to offer it, and 
have them refuse to accept it. What a great 
inner grief must have swept over Him when He 
beheld the city and saw what the future held for 
it and from what He could have saved it. “O 
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto 
thee, how often would I have gathered thy chil¬ 
dren together, even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings and ye would not!” 
(St. Matt. 23 : 37.) 

There was suffering in the betrayal of Judas, 
and in the foreknowledge of the weakness of His 
disciples in time of the great crisis. 

There was a rich experience in suffering en¬ 
dured throughout because of His determination 


THE TRUE MEANING 


87 


to permit nothing to cause Him to deviate one 
step from His purpose to reveal God in His true 
character as perfect Love, and establish a king¬ 
dom on earth, in which men might dwell together 
in peace and joyous fellowship. He saw into the 
hearts of men and knew the power of materialism 
and selfishness. He saw that allegiance to Him 
and His teaching would penetrate and jeopardize 
the most intimate of relationships. Father would 
turn against son, the daughter against her mother; 
a man’s foes shall be those of his own household. 
How soon in the early days these words were ful¬ 
filled. Rejection and betrayal by dearest relatives 
were among the commonest sufferings of the early 
Christians. 

It is not difficult to find instances of this char¬ 
acter today. Nor is it difficult to find in many 
Houses dedicated to God’s honor, teachers of 
traditional mould, who present that which dis¬ 
honors Him and obstructs His truth, and is in op¬ 
position to the teaching of Jesus. 

They will teach that sickness, death, disease, 
even poverty, is part of God’s will for man, and 
link it with the suffering on the Cross as a proof. 
But they ignore the true suffering which means 
loss of friends, loss perhaps of position, loss per¬ 
haps of material things, for a great principle 


88 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


for righteousness’ sake, for His name’s sake. For 
such suffering the Master says “Rejoice and be 
glad.” “Jesus strictly enjoined upon every dis¬ 
ciple resignation to such suffering as has a direct 
saving effect upon the world—the bearing of re¬ 
proach and tyranny in the spirit of love,” writes 
Miss Dougal. “He does not say that men who 
will not endure this redemptive pain must not 
count themselves His disciples; He says they can - 
not be His disciples.” 

His Example for Us. 

Let us then summarize: The only time when 
we have any right to say that we are bearing a 
cross with Him, or that we are emulating His 
sufferings, is when we are truly undergoing suffer¬ 
ing for the sake of right or truth—for some issue 
upon which our vision is clear. We all know how 
these opportunities have been presented to us and 
how we have avoided them for fear of what they 
might cost us. And when we have been the 
gainer by such avoidance, in our hearts we know 
we have been the loser. We have the choice of 
rejecting or accepting as He did. We also have 
the privilege of delaying the issue at times as He 
did, but in so doing we must not let our vision for 
truth be blurred. We must realize that if the 


THE TRUE MEANING 


89 


issue continues to be forced upon us we are going 
to stand fast and face it, at any cost, as He did. 
Then, and then only, can we, dare we, lay claim 
to the privilege of participating in His sufferings 
and sharing in “cross-bearing” with the Master. 

Then and then only can we be linked with the 
will of God in what we undergo. It is the will 
of God that we do right, that we stand for the 
right and suffer for it if need be. Consequently 
we are perfectly linked with the will of God and 
we can pray, “Not my will (in avoiding this fur¬ 
ther) but Thy will (supporting me in the right) 
be done.” 

How God’s will and love shone through all the 
suffering of Jesus on the Cross! It was by that 
magnificent demonstration of love that He won 
the hearts of so many who could not see the truth 
before. 

We may fail to reach many by kind words and 
by our teaching, but, by the way in which we bear 
persecution and calumny, we may bring many to 
God. That is the opportunity of the Cross! 

Reason for Decay. 

Many Christian congregations are in a state 
of decay today. That which should represent 
power within them is weakness, because they have 


90 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


failed not only to catch the truth of the Master, 
but they have perverted it. They have hesitated 
at losing some little thing for Him, when He asks 
them to be willing to lose their very life that they 
might find it. Whenever anyone loses anything 
for Him, there is a strengthening joy that comes 
from such a loss or suffering which more than 
compensates. It makes the loss a gain—it takes 
from the suffering its sting and brings an inner 
peace, for it unites us with the very forces of God 
and enables us to understand the paradox of the 
Master when He said: “Rejoice and be exceed¬ 
ing glad.” When this comes to us we taste of 
the fruits of true discipleship. 

Jesus did not try to lead His followers into a 
fool’s paradise, where nothing could possibly 
harm them. He saw there was much evil in the 
world and in men’s hearts. He foresaw difficul¬ 
ties for His friends and it was because of His 
deep love that He prepared them for their trials, 
assuring them of the close abiding companionship 
of Himself and the spirit of God who was to 
guide them. “In the world ye shall have tribu¬ 
lation. . . . But be of good cheer.” 

Some Christians have been filled with resent¬ 
ment against God for permitting evil, or sending 


THE TRUE MEANING 


91 


sorrows upon them. Others have actually re¬ 
jected God and have given up their church be¬ 
cause of this teaching by ministers. Thus we see 
that the false teaching regarding God’s will in 
suffering has driven children from Him, whereas 
the teachings of Jesus, under the same conditions, 
would have drawn them closer to God, and given 
them the strength to bear and overcome. Jesus 
taught us how suffering of any kind may be borne 
with an inner peace, which comes to all who find 
God as He revealed Him. 

The same is true of sickness or physical trouble 
of any kind. In placing God behind it as author 
of disease or death, one deprives himself of the 
most effective therapeutic power known to man. 
It is a recuperative power which fills man’s entire 
being when he complies with the conditions of 
union with God, when he knows that God loves 
him and desires him to be well, as Jesus taught. 
It leads to cleansing of heart and casting out of 
fear. Under such conditions healing follows 
quickly. 

As Jesus contemplates so many of His children 
suffering under various ills, uncomforted because 
of bitter sorrows, scattered here and there, yearn¬ 
ing to be fed with food for their souls and with- 


92 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


out the relief, the joy, the health and peace His 
word could so easily bring to them, can we not 
hear Him say in deepest love and pity: 

u O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . and ye would 
not.” 

III. How We May Use These Words. 

Because we say that these most wonderful 
words of our Lord have been grossly misinter¬ 
preted and therefore misunderstood and wrongly 
used, we do not by any means infer that they 
should be looked upon as useless for our purposes 
or that they should be limited to mere incidents 
in His own life. Practically everything that Jesus 
uttered has a universal meaning and reveals an 
attitude toward God which should be utilized for 
the teaching and guidance of every disciple. We 
should pray that prayer as He did, but in the hour 
of our spiritual battles only. It is a gross dis¬ 
tortion to use it in time of disease, physical pain 
or catastrophe as it attributes the cause of such 
disorder to God; and even when we use it in time 
of great spiritual battle, when we may be facing 
perhaps physical attack as He was, loss of many 
things dear to us, persecution, calumny, or what 
seems to spell defeat in the eyes of our nearest 
ones,—even under such conditions we cannot say 


THE TRUE MEANING 


93 


“Thy will be done” in the sense that all of the 
sorrow that is to follow, all of the pain and an¬ 
guish that we may have to undergo, are part of 
God’s plan for us and that He has so willed it; 
and in so saying we are but submitting to His 
will. To have this attitude is to lose the whole 
glory of the Truth revealed in those words and 
we fail to pray that prayer aright as He taught 
us. He prayed His prayer, “Let this cup pass 
from me,” and He did not shrink from the agony 
He knew He was facing. Then He changed the 
petition at once to an exclamation of wondrous 
faith, “Nevertheless, . . .—Thy will be done.” 
In other words, no matter what I face or undergo, 
“may Thy will be done,—may Thy will and all 
of Thy great love and power be revealed.” 

Many a pious minister has failed in his dis- 
cipleship because of his failure to follow the pre¬ 
cept of his Master in this respect as he has stood 
in a Gethsemane of his own. He has seen his 
enemies, and enemies of the Lord, growing 
stronger and he has avoided the issue, or he has 
compromised or has resigned and gone elsewhere 
from parish to parish defending himself with the 
statement that he must find a place where he can 
work more freely and more happily. He has con¬ 
tented himself with the utterance of the blessed 


94 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


prayer, “Thy will be done” in the sick room and 
houses of sorrow, where he had no right to use it, 
and has failed to apply it to his own spiritual 
battles, where it would have become a victorious 
power for him, and for God’s glory. 

He has taught some poor woman to pray that 
prayer when her husband is brought home dead 
but he has not learned to pray that glorious prayer 
himself and to teach others to pray it in time of 
persecution, in the only way that it can be prayed 
and used. This is the way the Master taught us. 

It is because the leaders of the Church have not 
only misinterpreted this glorious prayer but have 
failed to use it in the right sense, that the average 
Christian has failed to get the strength and help 
that would come with its proper understanding 
and use, and has found life empty in time of 
trouble or disaster and has not known how to fight 
a spiritual battle with great spiritual weapons, in 
time of need. The use of this prayer in the proper 
way in our Christian lives is the staking of every¬ 
thing,—all,—upon the will of God and knowing 
we will win even though we may be facing the 
loss of so-called “friends,” material possessions 
and even life itself. Such is the vision the Mas¬ 
ter opened to us and it is ever the vision of 
power and victory. Once we glimpse it we can 


THE TRUE MEANING 


95 


go forward and face a horde of enemies with a 
calm and courageous spirit. 

When we compromise when a principle is at 
stake we may seem to hold the good opinion of 
our friends even if they praise us for having com¬ 
plied with their wishes, but secretly they despise 
us as a “weakling.” When we stand firm and lose 
the apparent friendship of those whom we love 
they may not hesitate to condemn us openly, but 
secretly they honor us and even though they may 
do us great damage and cause us loss, they realize 
that they are the losers and that we have won. 
Only when such a vision is ours, as it was the 
vision of Jesus, can we truly exclaim: “Not my 
will but Thy will be done!” And God’s will is 
always done when we pray that prayer out of a 
full heart, completely surrendered to Him. 


CHAPTER VI. 

LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER. 


QO commonly accepted has been the misinterpre- 
^ tation of the Garden Prayer, that the words 
“Thy will be done,” used daily in the Lord’s 
Prayer, are given the same unfortunate meaning: 
i.e., submission to trouble, rather than an aspira¬ 
tion to power. This great prayer was given by 
Jesus to His disciples and outlines the fundamen¬ 
tal principles to be observed by them in communi¬ 
cation with God. It embraces acknowledgment 
of Deity, personal relationship, adoration, peti¬ 
tions for needs of body and soul, and praise. In 
spite of the division in the early church and the 
development of modern sects and denominations, 
it still remains the one prayer universally used by 
all Christians. 

It is safe to say that until very recent years, 
the wonderful phrase “Thy will be done” has 
carried with it the thought of God’s mysterious 
power and our acceptance of almost anything that 
might happen to us, as an expression of His will. 

96 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 


97 


It might be something good, but in the main the 
thought was that even though it brought pain or 
unhappiness, it must be accepted as from Him. 
Here also Christians have been led astray by a 
false theology. 

This meaning was far from the mind of Jesus. 
He meant exactly the opposite. He knew that 
the will of God was behind only the good, the 
joyous, the healthful things of life and He wanted 
men to pray therefore that God’s will be done. 
In spite of any Old Testament texts to the con¬ 
trary, God is not the author of evil. He gives 
only good gifts, perfect gifts, and in Him is no 
shadow or variableness of turning. The author¬ 
ity for this is not the modern radicalism or my in¬ 
dividual opinion, but the simple teaching of Jesus. 

Further, in order to get the aspect of trouble 
or suffering from that phrase one has to strip it 
from its context. This many have carelessly done, 
using it as a separate sentence standing alone, and 
the result, morally and spiritually, has been tragic. 
Hope was placed in their hand, they transformed 
it into despair. In both of the records of the 
Lord’s prayer in the Gospels the construction in 
this particular is the same. Jesus said “Thy will 
be done in earth, as it is (done) in heaven” (St. 
Matt. 6:10.) It is not a phrase by itself but is 


98 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


connected with the performance of that will in 
heaven. In St. Luke, the construction is changed 
so that this point is given particular emphasis. 
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.” 
(St. Luke 11:2.) We are indebted to St. Luke 
for placing this point beyond dispute. 

Jesus sets up the picture of the perfect exer¬ 
cise of God’s will in heaven and prays that such 
a condition may be realized upon earth. 

What is our conception of heaven and what 
means have we for glimpsing anything regarding 
the operation of the Divine Will there? 

It would require volumes to present the various 
pictures of “heaven” that theologians, poets, 
visionaries and even modern spiritualists have 
reproduced. Many of them are expansions of 
earthly joys and deeper expressions of human re¬ 
lationships, often most pathetically limited. 

For the present purpose, I shall go no further 
than ask that heaven be accepted as a spiritual 
kingdom, the beauties and joys of which shall be 
supreme in their perfection and only spiritually 
sensed. Above all it will be the realm of God’s 
unveiled Presence—a Kingdom in which He 
reigns in Love and in Perfect Beauty, and where 
all are joyously consecrated to the performance 
of His will. It does not mean that His gift of 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 


99 


free will will be withdrawn any more than it is 
withdrawn on earth. It will be extended as freely, 
but those who are there will have seen more truly 
that their freedom has come to them in propor¬ 
tion as they have harmonized their wills to His 
will and also that their joys have increased in 
the same ratio. 

Without freedom of will there can be no true 
love. Love in its perfection is the harmonious 
blending and union of two wills. There is no 
loss of individuality in love but rather a finding 
of one’s highest and best self in another. And 
that discovery always produces joy and strength 
which one may not possess alone. Love never 
desires to be by itself but ever seeks union with 
the beloved. 

This is the nearest the human mind, and at 
present the human spirit, can approach to the 
conception of heaven. All spiritual beings there 
are not subject to the force of that will, for love 
never uses force. They are conscious that they 
still have the gift of free will, the gift of choice, 
and they rejoice in treasuring that gift. If this 
were not true they would be but automatons, and 
they would be deprived of the joy of giving them¬ 
selves and the joy of voluntary service. The su¬ 
preme joy of love is in the giving of one’s self. 


100 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


We have a hint from Jesus that there were 
spiritual beings who exercised that gift of free 
will and because of their rejection of love, lost 
the joy of that presence. There is a darkness that 
comes into every life, human or spiritual, that 
sins against love. The punishment is not in¬ 
flicted by the injured one, but is automatic, and 
self-imposed. God is Light and in Him is no 
darkness at all. If evil or rebellion enters into 
the heart of a spiritual being, it cannot abide even 
heaven, it seeks darkness. It is self-eliminating. 

So we cannot imagine a condition in the Pres¬ 
ence of God when His will is not being done; 
for as the beings around Him see the real con¬ 
tent of that will, with all its beneficence and 
compassion, their desire is that it be expressed 
more and more. In reverse order, if we con¬ 
ceive that heaven is a sphere of order and har¬ 
mony and love, we know that it is because God's 
perfect will is being done there. Instantly His 
thoughts find quick response and instandy they 
are conformed to and carried out. 

That Will on Earth. 

So Jesus tells us to pray that God’s will may 
be done on earth as it is done in heaven. 

How unwarranted the thought of linking that 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 101 


will with anything that makes for physical pain, 
disease, sorrow and death. God has not one plan 
for His will in heaven, and another plan for those 
of us while we are still on earth. God’s will for 
man as well as for spiritual beings has behind it 
always the desire for the expression of a perfect 
Love—a perfect self-giving. We shall never 
fully realize the character of God until we know 
that He is always giving Himself to each one of 
us. This was the revelation of Jesus of the true 
character of the Father. He said, “I came to do 
the will of Him that sent me.” By words and 
deeds, by persistent opposition to disease, by heal¬ 
ing, and by forgiveness of sins, He was the re¬ 
flection of that will of God which was perfect 
Love toward man. 

God’s will must forever be separated from even 
the idea of evil, sickness, distress, catastrophe or 
tragedy of any character. When these things 
deprive us of our health, or blot out the lives 
of our dear ones, it is because His will has been 
opposed or obstructed. His will has not been 
done and it dishonors Him for us to say so. 

The gift of free will to man makes possible 
every known character of evil, of disorder, dis¬ 
ease, disaster and premature death. Much of this 
is due to the source of the greatest enemy of love, 


102 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


viz., selfishness. Man seeks his own—not an¬ 
other’s good. In so seeking he loses his truest 
good, which is God. None of the terrible suffer¬ 
ings that befall man are from God. They are the 
result of man’s inhumanity to man. 

God took this chance in bestowing upon man 
the gift of free will. Let us not blame God for 
this abuse of this priceless gift but keep the 
blame where it belongs. It is very simple if we 
follow the teachings of Jesus. 

Joy in That Will. 

Picture for a moment a place on earth where 
God’s will is being done—His plan and purpose 
being carried out. Let it be in a small com¬ 
munity or even in a single house. There is no 
reason why we should expect to find in the occu¬ 
pants anything of the character of premature 
angels or disembodied spirits. On the contrary 
they would be the most wholesome of all human 
beings, pulsating with every human emotion, 
healthy, vigorous, glad of the sun, air and food, 
participating in all the requirements of life, yet 
all under the radiant spell of the spirit; all feel¬ 
ing ever the presence of God in their lives, and 
as natural and joyous in their communion with 
Him as they would be in their communion with 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 103 


one another. Members of such a community 
would ever be knowing more and more of the will 
of God and rejoicing more and more in offering 
themselves as instruments for the performance 
of that will. Might we not say that association 
with such a company of persons might indeed 
be a foretaste of heavenl 

As they realized the real joy and strength that 
came to them by the design of God’s will in their 
lives, so they would endeavor to reflect it and 
bring others to a similar knowledge. 

In the bestowal of that gift, God limited Him¬ 
self to human beings in the operation and expres¬ 
sion of that will on earth. He performs His good 
works through us. As we accept it so we be¬ 
come the instruments for its expression. Through 
His loyal ones only, His will is done on earth. 
What an aspiration this great truth should 
awaken within us, to be God’s men and God’s 
women, and to know that, according to His plan, 
He is depending upon ns to work His will . That 
is the vision that Jesus intended to unfold to his 
disciples, when He told them to pray that the 
Father’s will be done in earth as it is done in 
heaven, i.e., through the response and obedience 
of consecrated subjects. 

God’s will will be done on earth only as clean 


104 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


minded men and women, with hearts aflame with 
love, set themselves courageously to become in¬ 
struments of His power and compassion and 
spokesmen of His truth. 

' HIS HANDS AND FEET. 

By Bessie E. Ellsbree. 

“Who will be feet and hands for me?” He pleadeth. 

“No more I tread this earth, where once I trod. 

Whose hands and feet will work as mine untiring? 

Whose eager lips will tell the Word of God?” 

Still is there need and daily groweth greater, 

For some to heal, to comfort, guide and bless, 

For strong and loving hands to free the captive; 

For some to lighten the world’s deep distress. 

Our feet, our hands, our eyes, our hearts and voices, 

All to Thy service, Master, here we give! 

Oh take them! Use them as Thine own from henceforth, 
That men, through us, may know that Thou dost live! 

Thus we summarize:—“Thy will be done,” as 
a part of our daily prayer, should never be even 
suggestive of a meek acceptance of an inexorable 
Divine decree, but a glorious acknowledgment of 
the true character of the God we serve, the per¬ 
fect confidence in the beneficent character of His 
will and the hope that it may become operative 
among men on earth. 

It is not a lament betokening a mysterious ob- 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 105 


stacle to the operation of our will, but a cry of 
inner victory and a call to action on our part 
to show forth to men the power and the charac¬ 
ter of God’s will. Those who pray that phrase 
aright are ready to fit themselves to become chan¬ 
nels of this power and love. 

God’s will is the will of Love. We must meas¬ 
ure everything that may happen by that standard 
and in this way we may approximate the will of 
God. 

By this method the will of God will never hold 
anything mysterious for us. There will be no 
more such outworn phrases as “inscrutable wis¬ 
dom,” “hidden design,” and “God works in a 

* 

mysterious way His wonders to perform.” Love, 
while still the greatest of all invisible forces in the 
world, is at the same time the most obvious. 
Love is always in the open, for Love is truth and 
life. The ways of the Lord are plain. How 
clearly Jesus revealed it when He replied to 
Philip’s troubled question, “He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou, 
show us the Father? . . . The words that I 
speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the 
Father, who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” 

So the words and works of God were mani¬ 
fested and demonstrated in the life and teachings 


106 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


of Jesus. Therefore, all mystery and darkness 
regarding God’s will are banished when we fol¬ 
low the teachings of the Master. He said His 
followers were to be like a light set upon a hill,— 
that our light was to shine. In all our thoughts 
of God’s will we are to reflect the light of Him 
who was, and is the Light of the world. 

THE WILL OF GOD. 

What is Thy will, O God? 

We pray, “Thy will be done 
On earth, e’en as in Heaven.” 

As each day’s course is run. 

Yet oftentimes take little care 
To learn the meaning of this prayer. 

What is Thy Will, O God? 

Is it to lay Thy hand 
Upon Thy children heavily? 

Are we to understand 
That but for patience to endure 
We pray, salvation to insure? 

What is Thy Will, O God? 

Is it not blessings, poured 
Unstintedly, on all mankind? 

For happiness restored 
To every heart, through love for Thee, 

So that Thy laws obeyed shall be? 

If but Thy will were done 

On earth, as in Thy Heaven, 

There would be nought of pain or woe, 

No sin to be forgiven; 

So let us pray, “Thy will be done,” 

With earnest faith, from sun to sun. 


LOSING THE LORD’S PRAYER 107 


Supplementary Note. 

It is joyous to record that in not a few quar¬ 
ters in our Church, the same view has been taken 
recently. One of the clearest expressions on the 
subject was recently given by the Right Rev. H. 
Ashton Oldham, Bishop Coadjutor of Albany. 
In a series of papers on Prayer Book Revision he 
had this to say on the phrase in the Lord’s 
Prayer: 

“This, moreover, is not a mere individual pe¬ 
tition but has to be interpreted, like all else in 
this prayer, in a social sense, and here, particu¬ 
larly, in its relation to its preceding clause. ‘Thy 
Kingdom comeV It looks far afield and touches 
all departments of life. In the city, in the coun¬ 
try, in the shop, in the office, in work and in play, 
in ourselves, in others, may His will prevail. 

“This petition represents the very heart and 
essence of all true prayer. For, in the ultimate, 
Christian prayer is not bending God’s will to 
ours, but bending our will to God’s. It starts 
with the assumption that His will is best, His 
purpose supreme, and goes on the supposition 
that God and man are allies working together 
for a great Cause, in the pursuit of which all that 
concerns man sinks into insignificance. ‘Thy will 


108 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


be done,’ here and everywhere, first, last and at 
all times, is its constant and passionate petition. 
Thy will be done in me; Thy will be done by me, 
with all the strength and influence that I have, so 
that my feeble efforts, my utter sacrifice if need 
be, added to and co-operating with all the forces 
that make for righteousness, may be enabled to 
advance the kingdom of God by so much as a 
hair’s breadth. No act of meek submission to 
the inevitable is this; but an enthusiastic, joyous, 
powerful, positive aspiration which makes man a 
fit and pliable and willing instrument of the Al¬ 
mighty in the furtherance of His great ends. As 
Father Carey well says, this petition, and indeed 
all true Christian prayer, may be reduced to a ( 
single phrase of just four words—‘Use me again 
today.’ ” 


PART II. 


SEEKING GOD’S WILL. 





PART II. 


SEEKING GOD’S WILL. 


INTRODUCTION. 


S the heart of man is ever longing for love 



** and friendship, so the soul of man is ever 
longing for truth. Men may apparently content 
themselves with less but they are never truly 
happy unless heart and soul are satisfied with the 
vision of love and truth, which God alone be¬ 
stows. Without this possession man is lacking 
in true happiness because he is incomplete. Many 
persons have failed to gain this vision because of 
an arbitrary separation of human and divine, or 
physical and spiritual. They have treated them 
as if they were mutually antagonistic. They are 
not. Man is a whole and must be treated as such, 
and his development must proceed along lines 
which embrace and make provision for both phys¬ 
ical and spiritual growth. The neglect of one 
works harm upon the other and man suffers ac¬ 
cordingly. A person who impoverishes his body 
with the idea that it is only the spirit that counts, 


in 


112 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


displays as warped a view of truth as the man 
who starves and neglects the spirit and cares only 
for the body. In God’s plan the development 
should progress in harmonious order, with equally 
divided attention. The spirit requires a noble 
instrument in order to carry out the full will of 
God. God’s plan is for perfection in body as 
well as perfection in spirit. To approximate less 
than this is to reject the Master’s words, “Be ye 
perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” 

The attainment of a perfect love with complete 
surrender to God as Perfect Love, means the at¬ 
tainment of a perfect spirit in man. As men and 
women attain this perfection of spirit they will 
attain, gradually, the physical perfection seen in 
the harmonious operation of all parts of the body. 
Perfect bodies and perfect health are by no means 
among the impossibilities. As men and women 
combine the aspirations of perfect souls and per-' 
feet bodies, the generation to come will soon reach 
the standard of God’s plan for man. 

Many have striven earnestly for this vision but 
it has been blurred by various Bible passages 
which would seem to set up a natural enmity be¬ 
tween body and spirit, and which would also des¬ 
ignate God as the author of sickness, for a benefi¬ 
cent purpose, which might not be achieved in any 


INTRODUCTION 


113 


other way. Thus, the prayer of real faith has 
been inhibited, because the person praying for 
help could not possibly be free from the pious 
thought that the sickness might be from God’s 
hand for a purpose, and if so, how could it be re¬ 
sisted? As God’s character was given a blemish 
so prayer, no matter how fervent, was rendered 
ineffectual. 

The vision of God’s purpose can never be made 
clear until one has a vision of God as Perfect 
Love. In order to attain this we must take two 
important steps. 

1. We must be on our guard against accept¬ 
ing anything in the way of interpretation which 
causes anxiety or questioning, through a conflict 
with our moral or ethical sense. 

2. We must endeavor to gain a more com¬ 
plete conception of the character of God, by read¬ 
ing the Gospels, as the reflection of that character 
in the acts and teaching of the Man, Jesus. 
These are the two thoughts to be expounded in 
this section. 


CHAPTER I. 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL. 

A T a meeting of an association of ministers at 
which the subject of the healing work was 
being presented, one of the clergy said he had been 
taught that God must certainly be connected with 
illness in some cases, because Jesus had said of 
Lazarus: “This sickness is not unto death, but 
for the glory of God } that the Son of man might 
be glorified thereby.” 

The difficulty here lies in the failure to com¬ 
prehend our Lord’s meaning. To take it liter¬ 
ally, that God had stricken Lazarus with a dis¬ 
ease and was to go further, and strike him with 
death for the purpose of giving Jesus the oppor¬ 
tunity to demonstrate His power, would be to 
place God in the category of the person who 
would do evil that good may come. Such an act 
would deprive God of the character of Divine 
Love, which we attribute to Him. It would re¬ 
solve the act to the level of a conjuror’s trick with 
Jesus as an accessory. As we analyze this inter- 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL 115 


pretation thus frankly and see how false it is, 
we reject it. 

Jesus fought disease and death, as opposed to 
God’s will and plan. There certainly was 
enough of it in the world in His time without 
the need of any special preparation of it on the 
part of the Father. 

What then was the meaning of the words of 
Jesus? A simple paraphrase will reveal it. Here 
is what He would say: “Lazarus is sick, not 
unto death. That evil which overshadows him 
shall not overcome him, but shall be turned to 
God’s glory. I love him and I shall go to him. 
His sisters love him and they too have faith. 
We shall utilize the power of this love and faith 
and shall seize this opportunity, not only to show 
forth God’s power and glory, but to glorify the 
Son of God, who thus works the Father’s 
will.” 

We take no undue liberty in presenting the 
above paraphrase, because it is based on His 
teaching of the Father’s character and verified by 
His practice of overcoming evil according to the 
will of the Father. 

The same thought comes out in the words of 
Jesus with regard to the man born blind: 
“Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, 


116 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


but that the works of God should be made mani¬ 
fest in him.” 

Many ministers have also interpreted the pas¬ 
sage to mean that God was the author of this 
man’s blindness in order that Jesus might have 
the opportunity to manifest His (God’s) works. 

In the first place such reading is unintelligent. 
The very passage itself contradicts such inter¬ 
pretation. The question at issue is: TV AS it be¬ 
cause of his sin or his parents’ sin that God caused 
him to be born blind? The Jews traced the blind¬ 
ness directly to God. 

Let us again paraphrase the words of Jesus: 
“Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents. 
God does not work that way. This blindness 
gives us the opportunity of manifesting the works 
of God in this man. I am going to work the 
works of Him that sent me. You should not 
demean God by attributing this sad condition of 
blindness to Him. I am going to reveal His 
true plan and will for this man. As you see that, 
you will recognize His true character and you will 
glorify Him.” 

Then He proceeds to awaken the man’s faith 
and to demonstrate what the works of God were 
—sight to the blind, and a human soul won to 
Him, through the spiritual sight also awakened. 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL 117 


When we gain vision of the God of Love, 
whom Jesus revealed by word and deed, it is 
impossible to consider Him as capable of the 
acts of cruelty such interpretations would fasten 
upon Him. 

The Jews would say: “God sent that blindness 
because of some sin.” 

The theologian would say: “God sent that 
blindness and kept that man a beggar; shut out 
from the light of day, deprived of the pleasures 
of youth and manhood, in order to create an op¬ 
portunity for Jesus to do an act that would glorify 
Him. We must not question God’s methods.” 

The true disciple of Jesus revolts from the un¬ 
truth in both statements. Jesus disposed of the 
Hebrew theology and showed that the man’s sad 
condition was not a result of God’s work or plan, 
but was a condition to be used as an opportunity 
to demonstrate God’s true plan and will for man. 
God was to receive the glory, because of the mani¬ 
festation of His power over evil, which power 
was set in operation by man’s faith. God’s works 
had not been manifested in the blindness. The 
glory was to follow the true manifestation of 
His works, which was the restoration of sight. 

In order to comprehend the true nature of our 
Lord’s words we must separate ourselves from 


118 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


the Hebraic coloring and the conventional theo¬ 
logical interpretation. Through the latter, God 
has been given a very bad name. Some modern 
theologians do not hesitate to charge up to Him 
acts such as those noted above, which we would 
think unworthy of a high type of Christian gen¬ 
tleman. Certainly the theologians have failed to 
grasp the character of God the Father, as Divine 
Love, and Infinite Compassion, whom Jesus was 
ever striving to reveal to the world. 

Our true relationship with God never really 
begins until we glimpse the vision of His true 
character. Then we are certain that He is in no 
sense the author of evil, even that good may come. 
He is, on the contrary, opposed to evil in all forms 
—moral, mental or physical, and He offers His 
power that we may overcome it and so glorify 
Him. 


A New Day Dawning. 

When the author first attempted a revision of 
the Jewish theology, which would clarify the 
teaching of Jesus and so make possible a revival 
of His healing ministry in the Church, he was at¬ 
tacked as a heretic. In nearly every instance 
these attacks came from those who were known 
in the church as “theologians.” From the very 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL 119 


beginning, however, he was supported in his po¬ 
sition by several Bishops of more than national 
repute and a goodly number of the clergy. Dur¬ 
ing the past five years there has been a distinct 
change noted on the part of many of the clergy. 
There is a growing tendency of many ministers 
not only to give ear, but to declare themselves 
when convinced. 

The most remarkable instance of this charac¬ 
ter is an editorial, which appeared in The Church - 
man recently, entitled, “Judaizing the Argu¬ 
ment.” It is a courageous article. Thirty years 
ago it would have rent the Church in twain. Now 
it merely becomes the target for a small number 
of critics, whose weapons seem hopelessly ineffec¬ 
tive. The editor opens by saying that “one of 
the tragic wastes of the religious life has been the 
spiritual energy expended by Christians in trying 
to make their beliefs and teachings square with 
ancient explanations and symbolism. . . . The 
Church has been moderate in its demands on 
men’s reason. It is the ‘doctors’ who have played 
the mischief with people who want to believe in 
a just God, a Christ who is a Savior, and Sacra¬ 
ments that are ethical.” 

The writer expresses the deepest veneration 
for the doctrines of the Atonement, the Trinity, 


120 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


and the Sacraments, yet many people fail to get 
the truths revealed by them because of the round¬ 
about way by which they are presented to the 
average seeker. He feels the student should not 
be carried through the difficulties of the Jews of 
the apostolic age, nor compelled to accept their 
mental processes. The point of view is so far re¬ 
moved that frequently a doctrine is robbed of all 
reality and Becomes mere ecclesiastical formula. 

“The pity is,” he writes, “that when we set 
forth to convert an unbeliever in the twentieth 
century to Christ, we should increase the hazard 
by weighing him down with all the arguments 
which Paul used in battling with his stubborn 
Jewish hearers; that we should compel him to go 
back and take precisely the same trail which the 
Jews of the Dispersion took in finding Christ. 
There is a nearer and more direct way of ap¬ 
proach; but the pesky old doctors aren’t satisfied 
if Christian doctrines become easy and natural. 
They insist upon adding to all the difficulties that 
the modern candidate may encounter in getting 
converted, those particular difficulties of the Jews 
of the apostolic age. It seems as if, in the pro¬ 
cess of conversion, we have to drag with us into 
the Kingdom today all the ancestors of all the 
twelve tribes of Israel.” 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL 121 


Lopsided Theological Education. 

One of the most striking sections of the edi¬ 
torial dwells upon one of the most vital aspects 
of the entire subject; the conventional course of 
study in the average theological seminary. We 
have again and again stated that many of the 
clergy would be glad to take up the healing work, 
but they are the victims of a theological system 
which has created tremendously high barriers. 
The writer acknowledges the difficulty as follows: 

“Some of us when we got through our semi¬ 
naries were almost as well equipped to be rabbis 
as Christian ministers. This, we hastily acknowl¬ 
edge to be rhetorical exaggeration; but who of 
us who has been through a theological seminary 
cannot recall regretfully the uninspiring hours 
spent in tying together Judaism and Christian¬ 
ity? We learned the sacramental doctrine, the 
theory of the Atonement, by first becoming inocu¬ 
lated with Judaism. We learned the doctrine 
of the Trinity by first becoming badly translated 
Greeks. And we are all so sophisticated in this 
roundabout, historical method, that it doesn’t 
even now seem queer or foolish to us. We have 
lost the desire to shake free from it. But what a 
tragic waste of energy and spirit! What a need- 


122 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


less tax on the reason and faith! And what diffi¬ 
cult Christians it produces! We are not contend¬ 
ing that our theological students are over-edu¬ 
cated by this exposure to history. We are con¬ 
tending that their education is lopsided. They 
know too much about the Jews, and not enough 

about Christians.” 

* ❖ * 

“Some of us are better fitted to argue with 
Jews of the first century than with a modern con¬ 
gregation. If our clergy came out of our semi¬ 
naries as well armed with arguments to appeal to 
John Smith today as with those arguments which 
St. Paul fashioned for the Jews of his time, they 
would convert more people than they do. We 
ought all to be teaching theology. We ought to 
be teaching the doctrine of God, the doctrine of 
the Atonement, sacramental doctrine. Many rec¬ 
tors are teaching such doctrines, but some of us 
in doing so are teaching a badly translated Jew¬ 
ish and Greek theology. There is not a doctrine 
of the Church that is not capable of being under¬ 
stood by plain people. Christian doctrine is cal¬ 
culated to be a help, not a hindrance, to the faith. 
It would be unpardonably cruel for the Church 
to insist upon doctrines if this were not so. 

“We believe in the study of theology. We so 


MISREPRESENTING GOD’S WILL 123 


thoroughly believe in it that we deplore the pres¬ 
ent lip-service, which theology is receiving from 
the Church. Theology is not an ornament; it is 
an aid and guide to religion. Because we believe 
that to be true, we wish to have theology do 
today what it did in every creative age in the 
Church’s history, to translate eternal truths into 
the language and needs of the hour. We shall 
bring back theology into the pulpits and class¬ 
rooms of the Church when we have a theology 
fitted to be of use there. The marvel is that 
Christ has been conquering the world, shackled 
and impeded by a theology phrased in language 
and imagery which the ordinary Christian cannot 
understand. The science of pedagogy is being 
respected today by the teachers of every science. 
Theology alone makes no progress in method.” 


CHAPTER II. 


THE DEADENING LETTER AND THE 
LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. 

TT was the letter of the law which prevented the 
*•“ Jews from receiving the truth regarding the 
Character of God which Jesus tried to reveal to 
them. I do not refer to the nation as a whole 
but to the orthodox scholars and teachers of the 
day who opposed His teachings and openly en¬ 
tered into bitter controversy with Him. _ They 
were those who said “Abraham is our father.” 
To which Jesus replied, “If ye were Abraham’s 
children, ye would do the works of Abraham.” 

There were those who said, “We are Moses’ 
disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses. 
As for this fellow, we know not from whence he 
is.” It was to such that Jesus said: “He that is 
of God heareth God’s words. Ye, therefore, 
hear them not because ye are not of God.” 

Theological education unfortunately does not 
always carry with it spiritual vision and capacity 
to discern the truth. Else the educated Jews, 

124 


THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT 


125 


orthodox to the last degree, could not have con¬ 
tinued in their learned ignorance, and their oppo¬ 
sition to the great exponent of Truth. If theol¬ 
ogy does not teach capacity to discern truth it has 
contradicted its very purpose. Much that is 
called “orthodox” is taught today in many 
churches, with regard to God’s will, but it is the 
orthodoxy of the Hebraic idea of God and it is 
just as far from the truth as Jesus removed it, 
in His discussion with the Jews. The average 
commentary on the New Testament is a sad com¬ 
mentary on the teachings of the Master, as many 
of His words and acts are given a traditional 
slant which robs them of the real truth they would 
reveal. 

“Traditional interpretation” seems to follow 
one general line. Each commentary of the Bible 
is based on a preceding commentary. There are 
professors in seminaries, of all denominations, 
teaching exactly what they learned from former 
professors and traditional commentators, whose 
whole aim was to conform to “orthodoxy,” with 
final refuge to the phrase: “The faith once for 
all delivered to the saints.” 

We should bear in mind that this faith referred 
to was delivered by Jesus of Nazareth, and “the 
saints” are supposed to be those who recorded the 


126 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


contents of that faith. Too often, however, the 
faith presented comprises the doctrines, dogmas 
and traditional interpretations of “saints,” and of 
fathers who lived many centuries afterward, and 
who added here and there a word, a punctuation 
mark, or a phrase, which would substantiate the 
theological opinion of the day. 

In the minds of the vast majority of theolo¬ 
gians today, “the Church” takes the place as the 
authoritative teacher and deliverer of the faith. 

When one listens to the voice of “the Church” 
in the edicts of the host of teachers, beginning 
with the Roman Catholic, passing into the Angli¬ 
can and ending with the most recently organized 
sect, calling itself an orthodox “Church,” a Babel 
is presented from which one seems to be unable 
to extract anything in the form of harmonious 
theological thought. Yet, each bears witness to 
a rigid orthodoxy; each presents proof texts, cites 
commentators and offers decisions from councils, 
and quotes early saints in support of its position. 

The recourse is seldom to “the spirit” of the 
teaching of Jesus. I say “the spirit” because, 
like the Jews of old, there are many Christian 
theologians today quoting “the letter” of the 
teaching of Jesus to suit their purpose, unmindful 
of the fact that the letter of that one quotation 


THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT 


127 


may be contradictory to all the “spirit” of His 
teaching found elsewhere in the Gospels. 

It is a common instinct in the heart of the 
average man (and woman too) to defend at all 
costs, the cause to which he has committed him¬ 
self; to emphasize its strong points, to cover up 
or minimize the weak points. This situation is 
pathetically commonplace among the Christian 
churches today. It is seen not only in the differ¬ 
ences which divide the denominations, but also in 
the extreme divergences of doctrinal opinion, 
which form the basis of bitter controversy and the 
growth of opposing parties within the churches. 

If one is going to find “the faith, once for all 
delivered to the saints,” in which “Church” and 
from which party in that Church is one going to 
find it? 

It is not a sign of loyalty to defend one’s 
Church when it is in error or obscures the truth, 
or hinders in the presentation of the whole truth. 
Too many men have wrecked their conscience on 
this rock. Jesus did not so treat the Jewish 
Church, in which He was born and reared, and in 
which He taught. He was always seeking truth 
from God; always making that truth known, and 
when that revelation did not harmonize with the 
orthodox teaching of the day, He broke with the 


128 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


leaders, and was rejected and crucified by them be¬ 
cause of it. He did not break with God. No truth- 
seeker is ever afraid of consequences. It is only 
the truly brave who are content with the verdict 
of posterity. 

The greatest devotion to a cause is exhibited 
in purifying it; keeping it free from all that would 
impede its progress, or weaken its appeal to men 
as a possessor and an exponent of truth. No true 
scientist cherishes for one moment any theory or 
opinion he finds obstructive in his search for truth. 

The true Christian should seek and work with 
a mind as clarified. Yet how many theologians 
there are who devote themselves to the strength¬ 
ening and defense of a distinct blemish in their 
system. 

Therefore, what I present is not anything new, 
nor an individual interpretation which I have set 
up in opposition to former commentators, but a 
presentation of the truth concerning God as re¬ 
vealed by Jesus of Nazareth, in the Gospels, and 
\the truth of the entire content of that teaching, 
and practice, and life, as a harmonious whole . 

I claim that it is easily possible for a reader of 
the Gospels to catch the spirit of that life and 
teaching so completely that he will be quick to 
detect instantly the few phrases in those records 


THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT 


129 


which have been given Hebraic color, or which 
have been amended by later copyists to emphasize 
a favorite doctrine, the result of a theological 
development of centuries. 

These discrepancies are so very few that they 
have practically no effect on the message as a 
whole, when we consider the Oriental mind, the 
Hebraic tendency, the materialistic Messianic con¬ 
ceptions, the gross ignorance and superstitions of 
the day, and the theory held by many scholars 
that the first three Gospels are expansions of an 
original document of unknown authorship. 

St. Mark’s was the first of the three. For 
many centuries the Gospels were preserved only 
by being copied again and again by hand, and it 
is a great marvel that the spirit of the teaching 
is preserved as wonderfully as it is. 

These same elements Jesus had to contend with 
in His presentation of truth and in His battle for 
it. Through His entire life He was opposed 
bitterly in His endeavor to reveal the true char¬ 
acter of God. That opposition sprang from and 
was carried on violently by leaders of religious 
thought of the day. 

All of the above influences obscured the truth 
as presented by “Moses and the prophets.” The 
entire critical formula Jesus used in overcoming 


130 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


these scriptural difficulties is summed up in His 
warning: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giv- 
eth life.” 

Therefore my purpose is not to present a new 
interpretation, but to make an appeal to read the 
Gospels in the light of the spirit and to appro¬ 
priate the truth that will certainly come to all 
who read it according to the formula of Jesus: 
“The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” 

Supplementary Note. 

Dr. Rufus M. Jones, in his new book, Spiritual 
Energies in Daily Life (Macmillan Co., N. Y.) 
touches very pointedly on the confusion as to the 
content of Christianity, arising from the con¬ 
flicting claims of various sets. He says: 

“One of the greatest difficulties about the whole 
matter is the difficulty of deciding where to look 
for the essential traits of Christianity. Are they 
to be found in the teaching of Jesus? Are they 
revealed in the message of St. Paul? Are they 
embodied in the Messianic hope? Are they ex¬ 
hibited in the primitive apostolic Church? Are 
they set forth in the great creeds of orthodoxy? 
Are they expressed in the imperial authoritative 
Church? Are they to be discovered in the Prot¬ 
estantism of the modern world? This catalogue 


THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT 


131 


of preliminary questions shows how complicated 
the subject really is. To start in on any one of 
these lines would be of necessity to arrive at a 
partial and one-sided answer. 

“Nowhere can we find pure and unalloyed 
Christianity; always we have it mixed and com¬ 
bined with something else, more or less foreign 
to it. The creeds contain a larger element of 
Greek philosophy than of the pure original gos¬ 
pel. The Messianic hope is far more Jewish than 
it is “Christian.” The imperial authoritative 
Church is Christianity interpreted through the 
Roman genius for organization and merged and 
fused with the age-long faiths and customs of 
pagan peoples. Protestantism is an amazingly 
complex blend of ideas and ideals and everywhere 
interwoven with the long processes of history. 
Even this did not drop from the sky ready-made! 
Nor did St. Paul’s message flash in upon him with 
the Damascus vision, as a pure heaven-presented 
truth. 

“What, then, is Christianity? In answering 
this question we can not confine ourselves to the 
teaching and the work of Jesus. Important as 
it is to go ‘back to Jesus’ that is not enough. 
We can not fully comprehend the meaning of 
Christianity until we take into account the fact 


132 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


that the invisible, resurrected Christ is the con¬ 
tinuation through the ages of the same revelation 
begun in the life and teaching of Jesus. Galilee 
and Judea mark pnly one stage of the Gospel, 
which is, in its fullness, an eternal Gospel. The 
Christian revelation which came to light first in 
one Life—its master interpretation and incarna¬ 
tion—has since been going forward in a continu¬ 
ous and unbroken manifestation of Christ through 
many lives and through many groups and through 
the spiritual achievements of all those who have 
lived by Him. Christianity is, thus, the revelation 
of God through personal life—God humanly 
revealed.” 

* * * 

“Some persons talk as though God were a kind 
of composite Being, got by adding up the God 
of the natural order, the God of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, and the God as Father about whom Jesus 
taught. He is, according to this scheme, in some 
way a compound aggregate of infinite pow T er, irre¬ 
sistible justice, and eternal love. Sometimes one 
‘attribute’ is predominant, and sometimes another, 
while in some mysterious way all the dissonant at¬ 
tributes get ‘reconciled.’ This is surely boggy 
ground to build upon.” 

His conclusion is most helpful. 


THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT 


133 


“The Kingdom of God though not all in sight 
yet is, I believe, as sure as gravitation. The in¬ 
visible, eternal Christ, living in the soul of man, 
revealing His wifi in moral and spiritual victories 
in personal lives, is, I am convinced, as genuine a 
fact as electricity is. But we shall see all that 
Christianity means only when the living totality 
of the revelation of God through humanity is 
complete.” 


CHAPTER III. 

FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM.” 


T this point some critic may say: “Question 



^ any possibility of error in the Gospel and you 
open a way for a general stripping of the whole 
structure.” Such a cry of alarm has no basis. 
Similar cries were raised a generation ago with 
the development of what was termed “Higher 
Criticism.” The complete destruction of the 
Bible was predicted by many ministers. Extreme 
groups among certain critical scholars arose but 
their influence was negligible. Out of all the work 
there emerged a far more intelligent Bible inter¬ 
pretation than before; God was not removed but 
was brought infinitely nearer, as He was shown to 
be represented in many pages purely as a tribal 
Deity, instead of the great God of the universe 
that He is. Up to the time of Jesus the Jewish 
nation had a very primitive and incomplete con¬ 
ception of God. This was the burden of the 
prophets. 

Therefore, we must not fear for a moment 


FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM” 135 


that the detection of a copyist’s error here or 
there, or the insertion of a pet doctrine, formu¬ 
lated centuries later, will rob us of the teaching 
of Jesus or have any effect upon that wondrous 
life. Nor will it detract from the value of the 
original record. We have to take into considera¬ 
tion the development and training of the minds 
of those who copied the records. The Jewish 
conception of God is still implanted firmly in the 
minds of many Christians today. Little wonder 
if those in the early centuries were unable to free 
themselves of it. The slight blemishes in the 
Gospel, however, resulting from this do not harm 
the original record so long as we bear this great 
fact in mind. 

“We must all admit that if we have in Christ 
a final revelation of God, that revelation must be 
patient of progressive interpretation. Life is 
never static, and even by the time the Fourth Gos¬ 
pel was written it was clearly realised that there 
was large room for the spirit to take of the things 
of Christ and interpret them to the men of that 
age. If we regard our Lord as the supreme re¬ 
ligious genius; if we believe that His spiritual 
nature was such, that while living under our con¬ 
ditions He was aware of Reality and saw the 
actual truth of God’s attitude to man and what 


136 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


it involved in man’s duty, we must perceive that 
in mediating this to men He must have been ham¬ 
pered, not only by their preconceived and ob¬ 
stinate notions of God and duty, but by the lan¬ 
guage, and still more by the mental pictures, which 
these religious beliefs had created. We must 
therefore expect that in any account of His life 
we shall find the teaching which was subversive of 
the religious notions of His time would be that 
which was most original to Him, and that into 
the first report of His words and actions, and into 
all subsequent editings of that report, the shadows 
of ancestral tendencies of belief and traditional 
ideas would be sure to press. Such a clue to the 
interpretation of the Gospels is not subjective. It 
is a legitimate method of criticism applicable to 
any ancient teaching.” * 

What then shall be our norm or rule in our 
reading? 

The very one which Jesus Himself followed 
and set up for us. He criticised the Jewish theol¬ 
ogy. He broke with the religious teachers of the 
day. The common people did not turn against 
Him. We read: “The people heard Him gladly.” 
The Jewish church leaders were those who re¬ 
jected Him and His teachings of God. He 

* God and the Struggle for Existence. Streeter. 


FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM” 137 


clearly showed them they did not know God. He 
told them so face to face. 

We are not far wrong when we say the same 
thing today to those leaders of the Church who 
teach the Old Testament, and the God of the Old 
Testament, with practically the same fidelity and 
with the same lack of vision the Jewish leaders 
taught them in the day of Jesus. A Bishop an¬ 
nounced publicly not long ago that he considered 
“every part of the Old Testament of equal value 
with any part of the New Testament, and that 
it must be so read and accepted, and taught.” 

Jesus rebuked the closest friends He had for 
their clinging to the old theology, orthodox as 
it seemed, when they asked, “Shall we call down 
fire and consume them?” He replied: “Ye know 
not what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son 
of man is not come to destroy men’s lives but 
to save them.” They were emulating a prophet 
and felt they were very orthodox in this respect. 
The Son of man was, and is, representative of 
a higher character of God’s will than they knew. 
(Read St. Luke 9:51-56.) 

In this rebuke of His friends He did not cast 
them off. Nor did they leave Him because He 
criticised and set at naught one of their funda¬ 
mental doctrines of God, which they had been 


138 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


taught by their parents and by their religious 
teachers . They became acquainted with a higher 
truth about God, far more wonderful than the 
one that had been shattered by their new teacher. 
God had not been taken away from them , but a 
false impression of Him had been removed. 
Henceforth they were to know God in a still 
higher sense, as being possessed of greater power 
and of a different character. 

I like to believe that this was a turning point 
in the life of St. John. He was keen in vision, 
ready to let the old husk fall and to receive the 
full fruit which Jesus revealed. God’s great 
majesty and power were not removed from Him 
but the expression of that Power was shown to 
be Love, not violence. The “Son of Thunder’* 
became the “disciple whom Jesus loved”—not 
a weakling, but the bravest of them all! 

Guidance in Gospel Reading. 

How are we to know when an error has crept 
into the Gospel record; how is an ordinary reader, 
with no time for research, to discriminate? The 
difficulty is not so insuperable as it might seem. 
I venture to present a few suggestions which may 
prove helpful. 


FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM” 139 


1. Much will depend first of all upon the at¬ 
titude with which we approach the Gospel record. 
Too many of us are hampered by false theology 
through denominational bias or faulty childhood 
training. Therefore an open mind with a real 
inner desire for truth is required. To this there 
should be joined the recognition of the power of 
the spirit of God in our lives, and that the record 
is the great revelation of that truth. Therefore, 
we must read with the spirit first, and then with 
the mind. This attitude once attained opens the 
way. Those who have it, easily recognize it in 
others, irrespective of denominational differences. 
In fact, denominational differences disappear and 
become insignificant, and a vision of true unity in 
Him glows on the horizon. Other difficulties dis¬ 
appear as one reads with inner mind and eye; and 
the words of the Master are given fulfillment: 

“Howbeit, when the Spirit of truth is come, 
he will guide you into all truth.” 

That is the foundation. Once this is laid, the 
task, although fraught with problems, is com¬ 
paratively easy. 

2 . Again, unfortunately, not a few of the teach¬ 
ings of Jesus have been interpreted by theologians 


140 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 

to substantiate dogmas formulated in compara¬ 
tively recent years. This is seen in reading into 
the parables a literal meaning, and the elevation 
of a tiny incident or phrase in the parable, into 
a doctrine. For instance, one commentator states 
that the “two pence” given by the Good Samari¬ 
tan to the innkeeper to pay for the keep of the un¬ 
fortunate man, represent the “two sacraments of 
the church.” Such exaggeration of the Master’s 
teaching is inexcusable. Again there are not a 
few scholars of all denominations who read purely 
figurative lessons in many of the literal acts of 
Jesus. For instance, leprosy is set up as a “symbol 
of sin,” and consequently more emphasis is placed 
on His warfare against sin, than upon the fact 
of His actual cure of this horrible disease. The 
same liberty is taken with blindness, too often in¬ 
terpreted as “spiritual blindness.” This point 
has been expanded in my former book, Does 
Christ Still Heal? 

The secret of obtaining truth from the Gospels 
is through the ability to discern even in the re¬ 
corded words of Jesus, the dividing line between 
(i) parabolic teaching, (2) literal words and 
acts, and (3) metaphor or hyperbole. Jesus 
spoke and taught through parables or stories for 
the purpose of impressing, usually, one great prin- 


FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM” 141 


ciple, or illustrating one great principle concerning 
God’s character or the character of the Kingdom. 
These should not be interpreted literally. He 
frequently resorted to metaphor and the extreme 
figures of speech commonly used in Oriental coun¬ 
tries for the purpose of making vivid the prin¬ 
ciples of the Kingdom. This is not the slightest 
warrant for giving them literal interpretation, yet 
the conventional picture of an actual hell of the 
most fiendish character has been built by many 
church teachers out of the metaphors of Jesus. 

The very same group of theologians relegate 
all of His literal acts of healing to the category 
of “signs and wonders,” used by Him as signs of 
His Messiahship, in spite of the fact that He told 
His disciples that they were to “continue” to do 
these works and even greater works. They ac¬ 
cept His command to preach and ignore His com¬ 
mand to heal. 

3. A final suggestion, which will prove most 
illuminating, is to keep the whole content of the 
Gospel clearly in mind. In spite of the slight 
differences in Gospel incidents as related by the 
different writers, there does emerge a harmonious 
whole. As we become more and more acquainted 
with the spirit of the teaching of Jesus, a great 


142 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


and beautiful structure is erected. When Gospel 
writers do not agree on some detail of His spoken 
words or works, we do not feel we have discov¬ 
ered a blemish in His work, but see only an error 
in a human record of it. Therefore, when a state¬ 
ment is not in harmony with what we have found 
to be the whole content of the Gospel, it is ef¬ 
faced by the greater volume of truth. It is quickly 
recognized as alien tG the true character of the 
Master, which has emerged from our reading 
and which has become such a great and living 
reality. 

The record of the cursing of the fig tree is 
incompatible with explicit teaching that we should 
bless those that curse us and pray for those who 
despitefully use us. We are to love our enemies 
and pray for them. He told them how His 
Father made “the sun to rise on the evil and 
the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the 
unjust.” Could a Son so familiar with a Father’s 
plan curse what the Father blessed? 

There is a great distance between the scholarly, 
even pious, theologian, bent upon his exegesis 
and the open-minded truth seeker, freed from 
traditions, who has found Jesus and is living in 
Him. As in His time, so today it is easy to 
recognize those who have “been with Jesus.” 


FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM” 143 


Reading with the Inner Spirit. 

Dr. Orchard in his sermon on “The Desire to 
Realize Christ” says most aptly on this thought 
of inner experience: “Jesus speaks not from a 
printed page but from somewhere within the 
heart.” He further adds: “It is not easy for 
the ordinary reader to realize Jesus in the Gos¬ 
pels. The Gospels are very curious biographies, 
and their way of reporting Jesus does little to 
help the reader. . . . Often we find it very 
confusing and unreal.” He speaks then of those 
who find Him as companion and who experience 
the real miracle of His being at their side. “This 
is the Jesus,” he says, “who is often unknown to 
the theologians and ecclesiastics, a Jesus who 
seems to patronize heretics and outcasts.” 

St. Paul’s Epistles.* 

The same principle may be applied to some of 
St. Paul’s epistles. Because they are deeply 

* Dr. W. W. Wade, in his new book, “New Testament His¬ 
tory” (E. P. Dutton & Co., New York), devotes a long chapter 
to the development of theology in the New Testament (Chapter 
X). He shows by numerous quotations St. Paul’s participation 
in the prevalent expectation of the nearness of Christ’s second 
coming. The nearness of that return influenced his advice in 
respect of certain social relations (pp. 639-640). Compare 
1 Cor. 7:31; Romans 13:11, 12; Phil. 4:5; 1 Thess. 4:15 ff.; 
1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:10; Romans 14:10, 12; 1 Cor. 7:8-24. Dr. 


144 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


colored in places by a strong Hebraic theology, 
there is no reason why we should reject these 
wonderful letters or even other parts of a chap¬ 
ter where unusual difficulties or differences occur. 
The truth seeker will make allowances for the 
following: 

1. St. Paul’s early training. 

2. St. Paul’s zeal in converting Jews. 

3. The atmosphere in which he lived. 

4. The customs of the tim6, which required 
great differences between the lives, in manners and 
even morals, of men and of women. 

5. St. Paul’s idea, which prevailed throughout 
the first few years of his conversion, that Jesus 
was to return to earth in a short time and bring 
all things to an end. Exhortations to prepara¬ 
tion for that second coming, considered imminent, 
are found in several epistles. 


When we unwrap these Hebraic trappings with 
which St. Paul clothed his early Christian teach- 

Wade also calls attention to the Hebraic ideas of satisfaction for 
collective sin, which could be rendered to God through the 
death of some individual member or members of the .sinful com¬ 
munity. “It was on these lines,” he writes, “that St. Paul sought 
an explanation of the death of Christ.” Much that St. Paul 
wrote became the basis of all the various atonement theories. 
For a student seeking truth this chapter alone will prove most 
illuminating. 



FEAR OF “HIGHER CRITICISM’’ 145 


ings, we do not destroy the value of his letters, 
we simply bring many things to light. Nor do we 
reject St. Paul in finding these or other discrep¬ 
ancies, for again and again we encounter the most 
exalted passages, filled with truth and beauty, 
where the teachings of Jesus stand out in all their 
simplicity and spiritual power. They are almost 
perfect expressions of the Word of the Master 
and reflect gloriously the power of His life in a 
new Jewish convert. His experience of the power 
of Christ within has never been surpassed. 

But where we find anything that does not har¬ 
monize with the whole content of the teachings 
of Jesus, there should be no hesitancy in choice. 

This thought must ever be in our mind: Every 
epistle, indeed, every part of the New Testa¬ 
ment should be measured by a single standard: 
Does this harmonize with the teachings and prac¬ 
tices of Jesus? 

Dr. Swain has stated that “if we can but free 
the religion of Jesus from the crude psychology 
of the antiquated custom or science of other days 
and see it at home in the fairer world of today, 
it would shine with new lustre; and at the same 
time give a rich, new meaning to the world it¬ 
self—such as it could never have apart from 
religion.” 


146 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


Those who are seeking truth, with an open 
mind, will always have the truth revealed to them. 
Customs and manners will change, but the truth 
will remain, and grow ever brighter unto the 
perfect Day. That was His promise. 

“If ye continue in my word, then are ye my 
disciples, indeed; and ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free.” (St. John 

8:31.32.) 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE RESULT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


OT until one knows the content of God’s will 
^ ^ for men as revealed by Jesus, can one ap¬ 
proach God in prayer with any degree of intelli¬ 
gence. The average appeal for help in mental 
anguish in physical pain is invariably neutralized 
by a conditional clause, testifying to the possibility 
of a refusal to respond. Even if not expressed, 
the theology of the centuries holds a deep 
rooted place in the subconscious mind and trans¬ 
forms the appeal into one of questioning uncer¬ 
tainty. 

Uncertainty is like quicklime to faith; like 
jealousy to love. The two cannot exist side by 
side. One must supplant the other. There is no 
such thing as an even balance between the two. 
Consequently, the very requirement Jesus makes 
for successful approach to the Father—faith in 
the perfect compassion and beneficent character 
of the Divine Will—is the very requirement that 
is lacking. 


147 


148 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


The fact that so many Christians hold this in¬ 
complete and erroneous view of God’s will, ex¬ 
plains why so many petitions for bodily healing 
are unanswered. Frightened pleading is not prayer 
as Jesus taught it. 

Many failures may also be traced to the fact 
that even such petition is taken up as a last resort. 
Medicines have failed, man has failed, maybe 
God can help. God is suddenly expected to become 
a wonder-worker, and even bargains are struck 
with Him if He will only help. Alas, how fre¬ 
quent are the failures under these conditions! 
It is not God who fails. It is man who has 
failed by his neglect of the fundamental princi¬ 
ples of Jesus. He does not know the character 
of the God to whom he is appealing, and so he 
has failed to tap the springs of God’s power and 
love by the exercise of a real faith. 

Still another element of obstruction to recovery 
is seen in the inner conflict, as to whether God did 
not send or may be prolonging the sickness “for 
His glory.” By others the sickness is interpreted 
as punishment from His hand, for a purpose. 
Both ideas dishonor God’s character and contra¬ 
dict the teachings of Jesus. Good health, per¬ 
fect health, lies in the will of God for all—and 
whenever it does not exist, His perfect will has 


THE RESULT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE 149 


in some way been thwarted by self or others, 
through ignorance or sin. 

In some of the early Calvinistic theology the 
will of God was traced so completely in every 
happening that might befall man that it really 
became little else than fatalism. With the elect, 
God’s grace was irresistible, with the non-elect 
there was no possibility of escaping His wrath. 

I have, therefore, more than a quiet admira¬ 
tion for the Puritan preacher who placed his rifle 
on his saddle as he started on his circuit. His 
wife piously protested, saying, “John, I wouldn’t 
take that rifle, for you know if you fall a victim 
to the Indians it will be because your time has 
come.” “Yes, Mary,” he replied, “but what if I 
should meet an Indian whose time had come.” 

Many pray that the penalty may be removed 
and that God’s hand may be lifted from them. 
Thus health is sought because man desires it, not 
because it is really God’s will. With an inner 
spiritual battle this sets up between the spirit of 
man and the spirit of God! When one asks for 
health or relief because he knows it is the will 
of God for him, the whole attitude is changed. 
He does not think merely of his desire for health 
but that he may use that more perfect health as 
an instrument of God in His kingdom, by doing 


150 GOD’S WILL FOR THE WORLD 


His work in a much less hampered way. Thus 
faith is fortified with a great purpose. 

With such a viewpoint, practically all the un¬ 
certainty with regard to the response of God is 
eliminated. Such faith begins to assume the size 
of a grain of mustard seed. 

In that state of mind one does not approach 
the Father in prayer as a stranger knocking at 
the gate of a benefactor with a feeling of trepi¬ 
dation that something unusual is being asked in 
the way of a favor or that there is a possibility 
of denial. But one approaches with the confidence 
possessed by a loving child, whose pleasure it is 
to do always the will of the Father—“always 
those things that please Him”—and who finds 
its freedom and happiness in the conformity to 
that higher, wiser, guiding Will. 

In like manner, the disciple of Jesus, who has 
striven to live and act in conformity to the will 
of the Father, may feel assured he is not asking 
any special favor but is merely placing himself 
in closer touch with the Divine Will in seek¬ 
ing to overcome sin, disease and sickness, mental 
or physical. He feels that what he is asking will, 
in being granted, be but an expression of that 
Divine Will, whose special power he is able to 
draw upon because of his knowledge of its char- 


THE RESULT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE 151 


acter, and his faith in its continuance. In his 
prayer he automatically offers himself, as the hu¬ 
man instrument by which that Divine Will may 
be expressed on earth. He asks that “Thy will 
be done” in, him and he knows that as all obstruc¬ 
tions to that Divine Will are removed, there can 
be only one result. 

This is the confidence possessed by St. John. 
All those who accept the full teaching of the 
Master may make that confidence their own, as 
he expressed it: “And this is the confidence that 
we have in Him, that, if we ask anything accord¬ 
ing to His will, He heareth us: 

“And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever 
we ask, we know that we have the petitions that 
we desired of Him.” (St. John 5 : 14-15.) 


THE END 












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